Growth
Is the business actually getting bigger, and how fast?
Growth measures the trajectory of the business itself — revenue and profit expanding (or not) year over year. A cheap stock attached to a shrinking business isn't a bargain; it's often cheap for a reason.
InsiderWolf's live Growth score is scored from Revenue Growth (YoY) and EPS Growth (YoY). Double-digit growth on both scores highest; negative growth on either scores Poor.
The top-line growth rate — before any cost or margin effects are even considered.
YoY growth compares each period only to the equivalent period one year earlier — never to some older baseline — which means a business can post a lower absolute number and still show negative growth, or the reverse.
A company reports $10B of revenue this year versus $8B the year before — (10-8)/8 = 25% YoY growth. If next year comes in at $9.5B, that's a -5% YoY decline, even though $9.5B is still well above the $8B from two years ago. Growth is always relative to the immediately preceding period, not to however far back you'd like to compare.
- Revenue growing while earnings shrink is a real, common pattern worth noticing — it usually means costs or margins are moving the wrong way even as sales grow.
- A single blowout or terrible quarter can distort year-over-year comparisons — check whether growth is a trend or a one-off.
- Fast growth alone says nothing about whether you're overpaying for it — that's what pairing Growth with Value (via something like PEG) is for.