Earnings Teardown
Understand what actually changed this quarter — before the market finishes deciding.
Seat
ER/HF · IB
Level
Analyst / Associate
Runtime
~15 min
Output
One-page earnings delta memo + questions list
What this helps you accomplish
A structured pass through a company’s latest results: what moved vs last quarter and vs expectations, what management changed in guidance and language, and which changes matter for the thesis. Built for the night-before or morning-after window when time is the constraint.
Delegate · Verify · Decide
The core L3VLUP principle: AI output is never automatically correct. Know what to hand off, what to check, and what only you can own.
Delegate
AI is good enough to do this.
- • Pulling the release, transcript and prior-quarter comparables into one place
- • Extracting reported figures and computing QoQ / YoY deltas
- • Diffing guidance text against the prior quarter’s wording
- • Flagging KPIs that appeared or disappeared from disclosure
- • Assembling a source-linked fact table
Verify
AI accelerates you here, but a professional checks the work.
- • Every extracted number against the primary source — transcripts get misparsed
- • That guidance is compared to prior guidance, not accidentally to consensus
- • Currency, share-count and period consistency across the comparison
- • That "growth" figures are organic vs reported where the company splits them
Decide
Judgment the human owns. This is the skill.
- • Which deltas are thesis-relevant vs noise
- • Whether management’s explanation for a miss or beat is credible
- • Whether the quarter changes your estimate of earnings power or just timing
- • What the two or three questions you’d actually press management on are
Inputs required
- Ticker or company name
- Latest earnings release / transcript (link or paste)
- Prior quarter release for comparison (optional but recommended)
- Your perspective: ER, HF, IB coverage or interview prep
The workflow
- 1
Frame the quarter
State what the market expected going in: consensus revenue/EPS, the 2-3 debated items, and where the stock traded into the print.
- 2
Extract the deltas
Revenue, margins, EPS and segment KPIs vs last quarter and vs the same quarter last year. Flag every metric that changed direction, not just magnitude.
- 3
Diff the guidance
Compare new guidance against prior guidance AND against consensus — they are different comparisons and get confused constantly.
- 4
Read the language
What did management emphasise, stop mentioning, or newly hedge? Language changes often lead numbers by a quarter.
- 5
Judge materiality
For each delta: does it change the earnings power, the multiple, or neither? Kill the noise.
- 6
Write the memo
One page: what changed, why it matters, what you’d ask management, and whether the thesis moved.
Run this skill
Any listed company, anywhere. Ticker or name.
Quality checklist
The output isn’t done until every box ticks.
- Every number in the memo carries a period label (Q/FY) and a source
- Guidance-vs-guidance and guidance-vs-consensus stated separately
- At least one thing management de-emphasised is noted
- The memo answers "so what" in the first three lines