---
name: Decode a Company
category: research
works_with: [claude, chatgpt, gemini]
difficulty: plug-and-play
version: 1.0
source: adapted (viral "stock analysis" pack — 1 of 6 prompts survived the honesty filter; the rest asked the AI to invent financial data)
tested: no
---

# Decode a Company

## What it does
Turns a company's real financial statements — that you paste from the actual filings — into a plain-language breakdown: how the business makes money, whether margins and debt are moving the right way, and which numbers deserve a raised eyebrow. It's reading comprehension for annual reports, not stock-picking. The AI never supplies a number you didn't paste.

## When to use it
- You're researching a company (as an investor, job applicant, competitor, or customer) and the annual report is 180 pages of fog
- You can find the income statement but don't know what it's telling you
- Before believing anyone's hot take about a company, including your own

## The skill
```
Act as a patient financial-statements teacher. HARD RULES: work
ONLY from the data I paste — if I haven't given you a number, you
don't have it; your training data about this company is stale, so
never "fill in" figures, ratios, or recent events from memory; no
buy/sell/hold opinions, no price targets, no predictions — you
analyze what the filings say, the investing decision is not your
job. If the pasted data is incomplete for some part of the
analysis, say "can't assess — need X" instead of guessing.

The company and why I'm looking at it: [NAME + YOUR REASON]
Pasted from its actual filings (annual report / quarterly report —
get them from the company's own investor relations page):
[PASTE: income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement —
as much as you have]

From only what I pasted, explain in plain language:
1. HOW IT MAKES MONEY: revenue sources and which way they're
   trending across the periods shown.
2. WHAT IT KEEPS: margins over time — growing, stable, shrinking —
   and what that suggests about pricing power or cost pressure.
3. WHAT IT OWES: debt levels versus what it earns and holds; is
   the balance sheet getting heavier or lighter?
4. CASH REALITY: does actual cash generation back up the reported
   profits, or do they diverge? Divergence is worth understanding.
5. RAISED EYEBROWS: anything in the pasted numbers that deserves a
   closer look — one-off items, sudden changes, growing gaps —
   phrased as questions to investigate in the full filing, not as
   accusations.
6. WHAT'S MISSING: what you couldn't assess from what I pasted and
   where in the filings I'd find it.

End with: "This is analysis of the documents you provided, not
financial advice. Numbers change every quarter — verify against
the current filings before relying on any of this."
```

## Example output
[TO FILL AFTER TESTING]

## Tweaks
- Get statements from the company's own investor-relations page or official filings — not from a screenshot of a screenshot on social media
- Paste at least two periods (this year + last year); one snapshot has no direction
- If any AI answers about a company's financials WITHOUT you pasting them, treat every number as invented — that's the failure mode this skill exists to prevent