A cheap stock is not a low share price. It is a business handing you a lot of cash for every dollar you pay. We screened every US-listed operating company we score for a free cash flow yield above 8% alongside a quality score of 65 or better, a price under 18 times earnings, and a share count that has not grown, then ranked what was left by the cash yield itself. Fourteen companies are shown from a universe of 28. The highest cash yield belongs to Teradata (TDC) at 27.1%, which also trades at 5.9 times earnings, followed by SkyWest (SKYW) at 23.2%. Banks, insurers and lenders are deliberately absent, for a reason worth reading before you use any cash-flow-based value list.
How we compared these
Nothing here is hand-picked. We ran the five filters below across every US-listed company we score from SEC EDGAR filings, sorted the survivors by free cash flow yield, and published the top fourteen in that order. Every figure comes from the same pipeline that powers the stock pages, and the growth figures use the identical calculation shown on each company's quality page, so clicking through shows the same number rather than a different one.
Two data guards run before anything reaches this page. Any company whose price is more than ten days old is dropped, because a valuation ratio built on a stale price is wrong in a way a reader cannot see. And one company, KLA Corporation, is excluded by hand: our stored price for it is roughly a quarter of the real one, which made it screen as a 5-times-earnings stock yielding 4.4%. We would rather publish an absence than a trap.
Every tool was judged on the same questions:
- →Is the free cash flow yield at least 8%, so the cash return is real rather than a rounding error?
- →Does the quality score clear 65 out of 100, which filters out businesses that are cheap because they are failing?
- →Is the price under 18 times earnings, so the company is cheap on profits as well as on cash?
- →Has the share count stayed flat or fallen, so cash flow per share is not being diluted away?
- →Is this an operating business rather than a bank, insurer or lender, where free cash flow does not mean the same thing?
Competitor plans and features last verified 6 September 2026. Pricing and free tiers change often, so check the source before relying on any figure here.
The 14 best value stocks, ranked by cash yield
Ranked by free cash flow yield, highest first. Quality is our 0 to 100 score built from margins, returns on capital, balance sheet strength and earnings consistency. Buyback is the five-year change in share count, where a negative number means the company has been retiring its own shares. Revenue and cash flow growth are compound annual rates to the latest twelve months. Figures as of 6 September 2026.
| Company | Quality | P/E | FCF yield | Revenue | FCF growth | Buyback | Yield | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teradata (TDC) | 77/100 | 5.9 | 27.1% | -1.5% | 16.1% | -2.8% | none | $3bn |
| SkyWest (SKYW) | 84/100 | 9.8 | 23.2% | 8.6% | 24.8% | -3.8% | none | $4bn |
| Blackbaud (BLKB) | 78/100 | 14.8 | 15.6% | 2.1% | 14.5% | -0.1% | none | $2bn |
| Trinity Industries (TRN) | 85/100 | 6.9 | 14.8% | 0.8% | n/a | -6.5% | 4.3% | $2bn |
| Maximus (MMS) | 79/100 | 8.7 | 14.0% | 3.2% | 16.7% | -1.8% | 2.2% | $3bn |
| Tenet Healthcare (THC) | 82/100 | 10.2 | 13.6% | 3.3% | 75.2% | -3.1% | none | $22bn |
| Leidos Holdings (LDOS) | 81/100 | 12.4 | 12.9% | 5.2% | 25.8% | -2.0% | 1.3% | $17bn |
| GoDaddy (GDDY) | 89/100 | 15.4 | 12.5% | 5.7% | 16.6% | -3.6% | none | $14bn |
| Lear (LEA) | 71/100 | 12.6 | 12.4% | 3.2% | 22.0% | -2.4% | 2.4% | $7bn |
| H&R Block (HRB) | 70/100 | 8.9 | 12.1% | 3.1% | 0.5% | -6.2% | 3.3% | $6bn |
| Pediatrix Medical Group (MD) | 75/100 | 12.6 | 10.7% | -0.3% | 13.6% | 0.4% | none | $2bn |
| Accenture (ACN) | 73/100 | 15.4 | 10.6% | 4.4% | 9.3% | -0.5% | 3.3% | $119bn |
| PayPal Holdings (PYPL) | 77/100 | 10.7 | 10.5% | 5.2% | 1.9% | -4.0% | 0.2% | $52bn |
| Gartner (IT) | 66/100 | 16.7 | 10.4% | 4.2% | 6.7% | -3.4% | none | $12bn |
Why there are no banks or insurers on this list
Run a free-cash-flow screen across the whole US market and it fills up with insurers, banks and lenders. Ours did: an earlier version of this article was eleven financial companies out of fourteen. That is not a discovery about where value lives. It is an artefact of using the wrong measuring stick, and it is worth explaining because most published cash-flow value lists have exactly the same problem and do not mention it.
Free cash flow means something different for a company whose business is holding other people's money. An insurer collects premiums today and pays claims later, sometimes years later, and that timing gap lands in operating cash flow, so the yield looks enormous even when the underwriting behind it is ordinary. A consumer lender books loan originations as an investing outflow rather than an operating one, so its operating cash flow captures the interest coming in without the principal going out. Neither company is doing anything wrong. The ratio is simply not measuring what it measures for a manufacturer.
Our own methodology already reflects this. When you open the quality page for a bank or an insurer, the scorecard you get contains no free-cash-flow metric at all: it scores price to book, book value growth, return on equity and capital adequacy instead, because those are the measures that mean something for a balance-sheet business. Ranking those same companies by free cash flow yield in an article would contradict the product they are being linked to. So this screen excludes them, and financials get judged on their own terms elsewhere.
What a cash yield screen actually selects for
With financials removed, a pattern in the remaining fourteen becomes obvious and is the most useful thing on this page. Look down the revenue column: negative 1.5%, 8.6%, 2.1%, 0.8%, 3.2%, 3.3%, 5.2%, 5.7%, 3.2%, 3.1%, negative 0.3%, 4.4%, 5.2%, 4.2%. Only one company, SkyWest, is growing faster than 8% a year. Two are shrinking.
A high free cash flow yield is the market telling you it does not expect the cash flow to grow, and often that it expects the cash flow to fall. This is a maturity screen wearing a valuation label. That is not an argument against owning anything on it, because mature businesses throwing off cash at 12% to 27% of their purchase price can be excellent investments, and several here are buying back stock aggressively with it. It is an argument against expecting them to compound the way a fast-growing business does. If durability over a decade is what you are after rather than a cash yield today, our long-term compounders screen asks that question instead, and shares no names with this list.
The top ten, in depth
1. Teradata (TDC), 27.1% free cash flow yield
Teradata sells enterprise data warehousing, the systems large organisations use to keep and query decades of operational data. It is the cheapest company on this list on earnings at 5.9 times, and it carries the highest cash yield by a wide margin, with a share count down 2.8%.
The catch is in the same row. Revenue has shrunk 1.5% a year. Teradata is a mature software business being squeezed by cloud-native competitors, converting a declining revenue base into a lot of cash. The tension worth sitting with is that free cash flow has still grown 16.1% a year while revenue fell, which means margin expansion and cost discipline rather than demand. That can continue for a while. It cannot continue forever, and a 27% yield is the market pricing exactly that question.
2. SkyWest (SKYW), 23.2% free cash flow yield
SkyWest is the one company here that is both cheap and genuinely growing, which makes it the most interesting row on the list. It operates regional flights under contract for the major US airlines, so it carries less of the ticket-pricing risk that makes airlines a famously poor place to look for quality. It scores 84, trades at 9.8 times earnings, has grown revenue 8.6% a year and free cash flow 24.8%, and has retired 3.8% of its shares.
Growing, profitable, buying back stock and priced under ten times earnings is unusual enough to ask what the market is discounting. Capacity purchase agreements with a handful of large carriers mean customer concentration is severe, aircraft are capital-intensive and financed, and pilot availability has been the binding constraint on the whole regional sector. Net debt of two years of free cash flow is real but manageable.
3. Blackbaud (BLKB), 15.6% free cash flow yield
Blackbaud makes software for nonprofits, foundations and educational institutions, handling fundraising, donor management and payments. It scores 78, trades at 14.8 times earnings, and has grown free cash flow 14.5% a year against revenue growth of 2.1%.
The same margin-over-demand story as Teradata, in a healthier form: revenue is growing slightly rather than shrinking. The customer base is unusually sticky, because a nonprofit that has its donor history and payment processing in one system does not move it casually. The number to watch is net debt at 3.4 years of free cash flow, the second-highest gearing here, which limits how much of that cash yield can go to shareholders.
4. Trinity Industries (TRN), 14.8% free cash flow yield
Trinity manufactures and leases railcars. It carries the highest quality score on this list at 85, trades at 6.9 times earnings, holds net cash, pays the largest dividend here at 4.3%, and has retired 6.5% of its shares a year, the most aggressive buyback in this group.
Elite quality, net cash, a 4.3% yield and a heavy buyback at under seven times earnings is the most attractive-looking row in the table, so the honest question is what the market dislikes. Railcar demand is deeply cyclical and tied to freight volumes and to the capital spending plans of a small number of lessees, and revenue growth of 0.8% a year says the current cycle is flat. The leasing book also means the balance sheet carries more debt than the net figure suggests once lease obligations are included.
5. Maximus (MMS), 14.0% free cash flow yield
Maximus runs outsourced administration for government health and human services programmes, the call centres, eligibility processing and case management behind public benefits. It scores 79, trades at 8.7 times earnings, yields 2.2%, and has grown free cash flow 16.7% a year against 3.2% revenue growth.
Government outsourcing produces exactly the profile this screen selects for: long contracts, predictable cash, and very little growth. The risk is concentrated and political rather than commercial. Contracts are re-competed on a cycle, and a change in how a government chooses to administer a programme can remove a large revenue line at a stroke. Net debt sits at 3.9 years of free cash flow, the highest gearing on this list.
6. Tenet Healthcare (THC), 13.6% free cash flow yield
Tenet operates hospitals and, increasingly, ambulatory surgery centres. At $22bn it is the largest company in the top ten here. It scores 82, trades at 10.2 times earnings, has retired 3.1% of its shares, and shows free cash flow growth of 75.2% a year, by far the highest on this list.
That 75.2% deserves scepticism rather than enthusiasm. Compounding at that rate for three to four years almost always means the starting point was depressed, and for hospital operators the period in question covers a genuinely disrupted stretch of volumes and costs. The underlying shift, from lower-margin acute hospital care toward higher-margin outpatient surgery, is real. The growth rate measuring it is not a rate you should extend forward.
7. Leidos Holdings (LDOS), 12.9% free cash flow yield
Leidos provides technology and engineering services to defence, intelligence and civil government customers. It scores 81, trades at 12.4 times earnings, yields 1.3%, and has grown revenue 5.2% a year and free cash flow 25.8%, one of the better combinations here.
Defence services is a business where the revenue is contracted years ahead, which is what produces both the cash predictability and the low multiple: the same visibility that makes the cash flow safe also caps how fast it can grow. Margins are set by contract type, and the binding constraint on the sector is government budget cycles rather than competition. This is the most conventional value case on the list.
8. GoDaddy (GDDY), 12.5% free cash flow yield
GoDaddy sells domain registration, hosting and web presence tools to small businesses. It carries the highest quality score in this top ten at 89 out of 100, has grown revenue 5.7% a year and free cash flow 16.6%, and has retired 3.6% of its shares.
A subscription business with millions of small customers paying annually produces very predictable cash, and GoDaddy converts it at a high rate. At 15.4 times earnings it is one of the more expensive names here, which is what a quality score of 89 usually costs. The long-run question is whether domain and hosting remain the entry point for small businesses going online, or whether that shifts to platforms that bundle it invisibly.
9. Lear (LEA), 12.4% free cash flow yield
Lear supplies automotive seating and electrical distribution systems to the major car manufacturers. It trades at 12.6 times earnings, yields 2.4%, has grown free cash flow 22.0% a year against 3.2% revenue growth, and has bought back 2.4% of its shares.
Its quality score of 71 is the second-lowest on this list, and that is the honest signal in the row. Automotive suppliers sit in a structurally difficult position: a small number of very large customers with the power to push pricing, high fixed costs, and a product tied to vehicle production volumes they do not control. The cash yield is real and the balance sheet is manageable at 3.0 years of free cash flow. The business quality is ordinary.
10. H&R Block (HRB), 12.1% free cash flow yield
H&R Block prepares tax returns, through offices and software. It trades at 8.9 times earnings, yields 3.3%, and has retired 6.2% of its shares a year, the second heaviest buyback here after Trinity.
This is the clearest example on the list of a company returning cash rather than growing: revenue up 3.1% a year, free cash flow essentially flat at 0.5%, and a share count shrinking fast enough that per-share figures rise anyway. A quality score of 70 and the structural question hanging over the industry, that tax filing keeps getting easier to do without paying anyone, are why it trades where it does. The buyback is the investment case, and it depends on the cash flow holding rather than growing.
Run this screen yourself, with today's numbers
Every filter above is a control in the screener. Change the cash yield threshold, raise the quality floor, or set a different size range, and the list rebuilds on current data.
Open the screenerHow to tell a value stock from a value trap
Every company on this list is cheap. That is what the screen selected for. The work that matters is separating the ones that are cheap because the market is wrong from the ones that are cheap because the market is right and early.
- Check the direction of revenue, not just the ratio. Teradata at 27.1% and Pediatrix at 10.7% both screen well and both have shrinking revenue. A high cash yield on a declining business is an annuity with an unknown end date, priced as if the end date is soon.
- Ask whether the cash flow growth came from demand or from cost. Several companies here grew free cash flow far faster than revenue. That is margin expansion, which is finite by definition. You can cut your way to higher cash flow for a few years, not for twenty.
- Distrust a growth rate above 50%.Tenet's 75.2% free cash flow growth compounds off a depressed base. Rates measured from a trough flatter, and they revert.
- Watch the share count. Thirteen of the fourteen have been retiring shares, and two are doing it at over 6% a year. That is management deploying the cash yield on your behalf, and it is often the entire return on a business that is not growing.
- Use the right ratio for the business. The whole reason banks and insurers are absent here is that free cash flow yield does not describe them. Applying a metric to a company it was not built for is the most common way a screen produces confident nonsense.
None of this is investment advice, and none of it substitutes for reading the filings. It is the same set of checks we apply on every page of our published methodology, written down so you can disagree with the thresholds rather than take the ranking on trust.