This takes a company’s operating cashflows and divides them by the total assets of the company to produce a measure of how efficiently assets are being used to generate cashflow. For example, if a company has operating cashflows of £1m and £10m of assets on its balance sheet, then the ROA is calculated as 10%.

This metric is used to calculate a nine-criteria scoring system that analyses a company's overall fundamental strength. Strong cashflows are typically a sign of financial strength.

Accordingly, one of Piotroski's nine criteria checks whether the Cashflow Return on Assets (ie.Cashflows / Assets) exceeds the Return on Assets (ie. Earnings / Assets). A company would have a higher F-Score if Cashflow ROA exceeds the regular ROA (all other factors being equal).