Simply Wall ST Review – A Stock Data Visualization Tool

About Simply Wall ST

Simply Wall ST is a stock tool that focuses on visualizing fundamental stock data. The platform promises to eliminate spreadsheets by offering relatively advanced visual data displays that help traders quickly evaluate stocks. The platform offers a fair amount of functionality for free, but it’s helpful enough for stock discovery that many traders will find the paid plans to be worthwhile.

So, is Simply Wall ST worth it for you? Keep reading our Simply Wall ST review to find out.

Simply Wall ST Pricing Options

Simply Wall ST offers a Free plan that includes a reasonable amount of functionality. You can look at up to five company reports per month and analyze up to five stocks in your own portfolio. But, you don’t get access to the platform’s stock ideas or stock screener.

Simply Wall ST’s Premium plan costs $120 per year. It offers up to 30 stock research reports per month and enables you to analyze 30 stocks in your portfolio. Importantly, you can also access the Simply Wall ST stock screener.

The Unlimited plan costs $240 per year and offers unlimited stock research reports and unlimited analysis of stocks in your portfolio. You can also export report data to PDFs and Excel spreadsheets.

Simply Wall ST offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

Simply Wall ST Features

Company Reports

The primary feature that Simply Wall ST offers is one-page company reports. These use colorful visualizations to evaluate a company’s investment profile and deliver a quick snapshot of a company’s investment potential.

To start, Simply Wall ST offers a snowflake graph that ranks five characteristics – past performance, future growth, value, dividend, and financial health – on a scale of 0-6. This unique snowflake analysis enables you to look at a company and know instantly if it’s worth researching in more depth.

The remainder of the stock research report essentially breaks down these rankings. Valuation is determined as a company’s current share price versus its fair value, which gives a percent discount or premium based on future free cash flow. Valuation also considers PE ratio, PEG ratio, and price-to-book ratio compared to the industry and market averages.

Future growth examines estimated future earnings growth and revenue growth over the next five years, based on data from analysts following the company of interest. Again, these are compared to the industry average and to the market, which is helpful, although hardly groundbreaking. The past company performance metric is similar, accounting for past earnings and revenue growth compared to the industry average.

The financial health analysis that Simply Wall ST presents is a bit more unusual. You can see when a company has taken on new rounds of debt, as well as how that has driven net worth over time. A company’s balance sheet is presented in a graphical format, which is an interesting concept.

Finally, the company report looks at dividend payment growth over time and compares it to the industry average (not only to other dividend payers within the industry). You can also see how the company is managed, including management tenure, management share purchases, and CEO compensation. In addition, the platform shows how much of a company’s stock is owned by financial institutions as opposed to individual investors and highlights recent insider trading activity.

One very nice feature is that it’s possible to compare multiple companies side-by-side. This essentially puts the companies’ stock analysis reports next to each other on a single screen, which is a very useful way of looking at cross-industry data.

The thing that felt lacking in Simply Wall ST’s reports was detailed fundamental analysis. The platform makes the financial data that’s used directly to calculate metrics like P/E ratio available, but you can’t pull up a company’s balance sheet to do your own discounted cash flow calculation or build your own fundamental metrics. That’s a little disappointing since one of the promises Simply Wall ST makes is to make sophisticated stock analysis techniques and institutional-quality data available to retail investors.

Stock Discovery and Screener

Simply Wall ST can also be used to discover potential new stock picks thanks to its algorithm-driven Discover feature. This includes a number of helpful categories, like “Buy the Dip” or “Growth at a Reasonable Price.” It’s easy to see how these categories relate to the data available in the company report, which is even more helpful for knowing what to look for.

While there’s no shortage of companies listed under any of these categories, it’s nice that you can also filter down the list by market or industry sector. If you want an even finer search, you’ll need to use Simply Wall ST’s stock screener.

The screener is extremely well designed. You can filter by market and industry, and then there is a rather large list of fundamental parameters that you can choose to include in your search or not. Most of these correspond to the same metrics used in the company reports, which gives the platform a very unified feel without it being limiting. Even better, you can filter directly using the five characteristics shown in the snowflake diagram using the same 0-6 scale. It’s not the most detailed stock screener we’ve tested, but it offers enough parameters for generating ideas to research further.

The results are displayed with snowflake diagrams, which makes it relatively easy to find relevant results if that’s what your search was primarily based on. However, if you were looking at more detailed fundamental parameters, this isn’t the most helpful results display. You can also easily save stock screens for future use. These screens are great for longer-term investors who like pre-built scans. Short-term traders and investors who have unique trading styles would likely prefer screeners with a wider variety of technical indicators, such as Trade Ideas or FinViz.

Portfolios

Simply Wall ST allows you to create watchlists and portfolios. These blend the functionality of company reports with portfolio tracking features like return calculations. The platform makes it easy to import portfolios from a CSV file, which is helpful for importing data from your brokerage. Of course, you can also add stocks to your portfolio using a button at the top of every stock report.

Customization and Layout

There aren’t any options to customize the look of the Simply Wall ST interface, although you hardly need them. The layout and menus are intuitive and it’s easy to navigate around the platform. In addition, Simply Wall ST offers a mobile app from which you can check on company reports and use the stock screener.

Platform Differentiators

Simply Wall ST stands out for offering highly visual displays of fundamental data, instead of simply bombarding you with numbers and data tables. The visualization is particularly helpful when comparing two companies from the same industry side-by-side. In addition, the Discover feature and stock screener do a pretty good job of highlighting companies that are worth looking further into.

The drawback to this approach is that Simply Wall ST’s stock analysis tools may be a little too high-level for some traders. You can’t conduct detailed fundamental stock research, but rather just a broad financial review. We like using Simply Wall ST to find companies that might offer long-term investment opportunities, then following up with more in-depth stock analysis and detailed due diligence using other tools.

What Type of Trader is Simply Wall ST Best For?

Simply Wall ST is best for fundamental traders who have trouble interpreting data in its typical Excel spreadsheet format. The platform captures a decent breadth of critical information in its visuals, and the side-by-side visual comparisons are much easier on the eyes than any comparisons you could create quickly from a spreadsheet.

That said, seasoned fundamental traders may not get many benefits from this platform. You can’t simply add metrics into your investment analysis, which is an important way that many experienced traders generate new insights. Simply Wall ST is a lot less flexible than an Excel spreadsheet and you probably wouldn’t want to use this software on its own to make big financial decisions.

The Discover tab is a major plus even for more experienced investors. You can use it to generate investing ideas and quickly highlight companies worth looking more closely at.

Alternatives to Simply Wall ST

Simply Wall ST is part of a crowded field of fundamental stock research platforms. Let’s take a look at how it stacks up against similar tools.

Simply Wall ST vs. Stock Rover

Stock Rover is a highly flexible fundamental stock research platform with an impressive range of tools. Stock Rover’s research reports aren’t nearly as visually compelling as those in Stock Rover, but they contain much more detailed information.

Stock Rover enables you to build custom charts of fundamental metrics and valuation ratios. You can even compare fundamentals from multiple companies on the same chart. A powerful fundamental stock screener helps you generate investing ideas.

For investors who want to dive into a deep stock analysis, we recommend Stock Rover over Simply Wall ST. It takes more time to identify promising stocks and research companies, but the analysis options are much more flexible.

Simply Wall ST vs. Finbox

Finbox is another fundamental research platform that offers more analytical flexibility than Simply Wall ST. You can chart fundamental data and access a screener with dozens of fundamental and valuation filters.

The real value of Finbox lies in its customizable valuation models. These offer several ways to calculate the fair value of a stock, so you can see whether a stock truly is undervalued.

Finbox requires a lot more financial nerdiness than Simply Wall ST and it’s not as easy to use for stock discovery. So, it’s best suited as a follow-up tool for researching promising companies.

Simply Wall ST vs. Old School Value

Old School Value shares a lot of elements in common with Simply Wall ST. It offers decent data visualizations, tools for comparing stocks from the same industry side-by-side, and stock scores for categories like quality, growth, and value.

Old School Value goes a little more in-depth with its financial analysis than Simply Wall ST, enabling you to compare different valuation models for each stock and to screen stocks based on a wider variety of fundamental metrics. However, there are no premade screens, so investors might prefer Simply Wall ST during the discovery phase of their research.

Pros

• Not very expensive and free plan offers a lot of functionality
• Excellent Discover page with highly descriptive categories
• Stock screener allows you to sort by value, growth, dividend, and performance ratings
• Company reports can be compared side-by-side
• Includes a mobile app with many of the same visuals

Cons

• Not as flexible as an Excel spreadsheet for doing your own analysis
• Stock screener and company reports can be too high-level for serious research