This factor belongs to the category of profitability and growth analysis. Specifically, the return on total assets (ROA) for a single quarter measures the efficiency of a company in generating profits using all its assets and is an important indicator for measuring profitability. Its year-on-year change (i.e., this factor) reflects the growth of the company's profitability at the quarterly level. A positive year-on-year change indicates that the company's total asset profitability has increased compared with the same period last year, while a negative year-on-year change indicates a decline in profitability. This factor helps identify companies with rapidly growing profitability or declining profitability. In quantitative investment, this indicator can be used to construct factors to help screen out companies with sustained growth in profitability. Compared with month-on-month changes, year-on-year changes can effectively eliminate seasonal effects, making the analysis of a company's profitability trend more accurate. At the same time, compared with growth rate indicators, incremental indicators are less affected by the base number and can better reflect the real changes in profitability.