Free cash flow

It's the cash left over after the business has paid for itself: what operations generate minus what has to be invested in assets to keep running. It's the money that can actually pay a dividend, buy back shares, repay debt or acquire another company.

That's why nearly every valuation method ends up here. The DCF discounts this line; the FCF yield divides it by market cap; the JP Valuation uses it to check that accounting profit is backed by cash. Profit that doesn't convert into FCF eventually becomes a problem, however long it takes to show.

There is no single market definition: some subtract only maintenance capex, some deduct lease payments, some adjust for share-based pay. Here it's computed the same way for every company and from the figures exactly as reported, so a comparison between two pages is valid even if the number differs from another site's.