By the end of December 2010, we'll be making some improvements to the stock data used on StockCentral to provide some additional information and enhance some existing data points. We will continue to use data provided by Morningstar as we have been using, although some of the changes listed below are due to some changes within Morningstar with regards to the back-end systems that deliver underlying data to us.

The industry and sector classifications will change slightly. Morningstar has remapped its sector and industry groupings to match more closely the S&P GICS categories. You will see these changes in the Sector/Industry Browser on the site, as well as in any company-related data. You'll probably notice right away that Real Estate is a new sector; those companies were previously included in the Financials sector.

We are replacing Cash Flow per Share in the data with Free Cash Flow per Share. Free Cash Flow removes any capital expenditures from the calculations and is preferred by many investors when evaluating a company's financial statements. Here are Morningstar's definitions of the underlying data points in the calculation of Free Cash Flow:

Free Cash Flow = Operating Cash Flow - Capital Expenditures

Operating Cash Flow: The net cash from (used in) all of the entity's operating activities, including those of discontinued operations, of the reporting entity. Operating activities include all transactions and events that are not defined as investing or financing activities. Operating activities generally involve producing and delivering goods and providing services. Cash flows from operating activities are generally the cash effects of transactions and other events that enter into the determination of net income.

Capital Expenditures: Funds used by a company to acquire or upgrade physical assets such as property, industrial buildings or equipment. This type of outlay is made by companies to maintain or increase the scope of their operations. Capital expenditures are generally depreciated or depleted over their useful life, as distinguished from repairs, which are subtracted from the income of the current year.

We are adding long-term analyst consensus estimates (ACE) of EPS growth rates.

We are also adding data for Canadian companies from the Toronto Stock Exchange and Toronto Venture Exchange.

Finally, we expect that quarterly and annual data will be available much faster than before. We will continue to report only finalized data (after a company reports results to the SEC), but changes in Morningstar's infrastructure will get updates to us much more quickly.

Next year, we'll be launching a second phase of improvements, where we hope to add some more data points, including one- and two-year sales and eps estimates, preliminary results, and more financial statement data. We're targeting an April 1, 2011 release for these changes.

What's Not Changing

The data will continue to reflect EPS from operations with non-recurring items removed from results (that is, EPS are still normalized).

You will not have to make any adjustments to your StockCentral user name or password on the site or in Toolkit 6 or other software.

We will continue to provide our proprietary Take Stock Quality Index and Take Stock EPS Estimates in the data service for Toolkit 6.

Compatibility with BetterInvesting Data

BetterInvesting, the parent of ICLUBcentral Inc., will be changing over to use the same underlying Morningstar data as part of this switchover (moving from the S&P data it had been using). This means that if members of your club use BI data and you use StockCentral data, the company data will match up. Both BetterInvesting and StockCentral will continue to provide data for Toolkit so you can choose the service that suits you best. Of course, the data service is just a small part of what BetterInvesting and StockCentral offer, so many people will continue to see the wisdom of subscribing to both.

If you have questions about this change, drop by the Toolshed Forum and let us know your thoughts.