Balance Sheet & Debt
Debt-Free Consistent Dividend is a Balance Sheet & Debt screen. It checks every NSE-listed stock against 2 conditions computed from nightly data, after excluding heavily pledged promoters and very small market caps. This page explains the rule, each figure and its source. It lists no stocks and is not advice.
Dividends funded from free cash flow are fundamentally different from dividends funded by borrowing. A company paying a 3% yield while carrying heavy debt is extracting value from lenders on behalf of shareholders — a fragile arrangement that collapses when credit conditions tighten. This screen isolates dividend payers who have earned the right to distribute: D/E below 0.2 confirms the dividend is not leveraged, yield above 2% confirms the income is meaningful, and three consecutive years without a missed payment confirms the board treats the dividend as an obligation rather than a discretionary gesture. No other QP14 screen combines all three dimensions — the plain dividend_yield screen has neither a debt filter nor a consistency requirement.
A stock must satisfy every condition below. Conditions are grouped under the pillar they test.
Financial Health
Income Yield
Described in the philosophy; not a pass/fail condition in the current rule
Dividend Consistency
Hard excludes
Ranked by Dividend Years (last 3), highest first.
Debt-to-Equity Ratio
Total long-term debt divided by total shareholders' equity. Screen threshold: below 0.2.
Low is better
Dividend Yield (%)
Annual dividends per share divided by current market price per share, expressed as a percentage. Uses the most recently declared annual dividend. Screen threshold: above 2%.
High is better
Consecutive Dividend Years
Number of consecutive annual reporting periods in which the company paid a dividend, counting backward from the most recent period. Screen threshold: at least 3 (no gaps in the last 3 years).
High is better
Type hypothetical values to see which conditions they satisfy. These are not real stocks and nothing here is stored.
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How many stocks pass if this threshold were set differently. Counts only; no stocks are named.
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We have not measured this screen yet, so there is no record to explain.
Not yet testable — 5 of 6 points needed to chart a rolling information coefficient.
This is a historical, statistical measurement produced by FINOME TECHNOLOGIES PVT LTD's research harness on past data. It is not a prediction, and past results do not indicate future results. The universe is today's Nifty 500 constituents, so the sample is affected by survivorship bias. It describes how a screen's selections behaved in the past and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation.
Rule version 1.0.0