| name | stock-business-review |
| description | Review a US-listed company's business model and revenue structure for an equity-research workup. Covers product/service mix, customer concentration, geographic exposure, industry position, revenue-growth decomposition (organic vs acquired vs price vs volume), and information-tier discipline (which numbers are facts vs management narrative). Trigger when analyzing a single US ticker's business fundamentals, when reading 10-K Item 1 "Business" and Item 1A "Risk Factors", or when the orchestrator stock-analysis-lead dispatches business review. Dispatched by stock-analysis-lead or invoked directly for business-focused analysis. |
| allowed-tools | Read, Grep, Glob, WebSearch, WebFetch, Bash |
Stock Business Review
Purpose
Read a company's 10-K and 10-Q with the discipline of a senior equity analyst: identify what the business actually sells, to whom, how it makes money, and what kind of growth its revenue numbers are reflecting. Surface red flags that pure financial-statement readers miss — narrative buckets, undefined adjusted metrics, customer concentration risk, and acquired-growth dependency. The output is a structured set of Findings that the orchestrator uses to build the Good-Company score and frame valuation.
When To Use
- Orchestrator
stock-analysis-lead dispatches a business-dimension review.
- The user directly asks "what does actually do" or "is 's growth real" or "tell me about 's customer concentration".
- A standalone business-model classification is needed before deeper financial analysis.
When NOT To Use
- Cash-flow / margin / operating-leverage analysis →
stock-earnings-quality-review
- Leverage / liquidity / goodwill →
stock-balance-sheet-review
- Capital allocation / management quality →
stock-management-review
- Competitive moat / TAM / market share →
stock-industry-review
- Final verdict or target price → orchestrator's synthesis step (do NOT recommend buy/hold/sell from this skill)
Mandatory Gates
1) Execution Integrity Gate
You must read the 10-K Item 1 "Business" section before drawing any conclusion. If the orchestrator's data-manifest.json does not include a 10-K path, return SKIPPED (no 10-K available) and do not fabricate analysis from press releases or analyst summaries.
2) Filing Vintage Gate
The 10-K must be the most recent annual filing (within the last 14 months from today). If the only available 10-K is older, flag it explicitly in Execution Status — old filings miss recent strategic shifts and recent customer-concentration data.
3) Citation Gate
Every Finding must cite a specific filing section (e.g., "10-K Item 1, page 7" or "10-K Item 1A, Risk Factor 3"). Findings without citations are suppressed.
4) Non-US Refusal Gate
If you detect the ticker is an A-share (3-digit or 6-digit Chinese code), HK-share (4-digit HK code), or ADR of a foreign private issuer filing 20-F instead of 10-K, return SKIPPED (non-US issuer — out of scope) immediately.
Workflow
- Locate the 10-K and latest 10-Q from the manifest. Read 10-K Item 1 (Business), Item 1A (Risk Factors), and Item 7 (MD&A) summary.
- Run the Filing-Pattern-Gated Execution Protocol — for each checklist item with a filing-section pattern, locate the relevant section first, then apply semantic analysis only on those passages.
- For checklist items that are pure-semantic (no stable filing keyword), apply full reasoning.
- Cross-check Risk Factors against the Business section — discrepancies between the rosy "Business" narrative and the candid "Risk Factors" are a strong signal.
- Emit Findings with severity, evidence quote, and citation. Suppress items not found rather than fabricate.
Filing-Pattern-Gated Execution Protocol
This is the same idea as Grep-Gated for code: each check has a filing-section pattern. If the section/keyword is absent, mark NOT FOUND and skip semantic analysis. Only HIT sections get full reasoning.
Execution Order
- Identify target filings from the manifest (10-K, 10-Q, optionally earnings call transcript).
- For each grep-gated checklist item, search the filing(s) for the documented keyword/section pattern.
- HIT → semantic analysis to confirm true positive vs false positive.
- MISS → auto-mark NOT FOUND. Do not extrapolate from absence — note absence in Execution Status if material.
- For semantic-only items: full reasoning on the relevant section.
- Report ONLY FOUND items.
- Include
Filing pre-scan: X/Y items hit, Z confirmed as findings in Execution Status.
Compound Pattern Protocol
Some red flags are "presence of A without B" (e.g., "AI revenue" mentioned without a definition). Use compound patterns:
- HIT on A (keyword present)
- AND NOT on B (definition / methodology / breakdown absent in the same section)
- → Confirmed Finding
Business Checklist (11 Items)
| ID | Item | Filing Pattern | Severity Bias |
|---|
| BUS-01 | Revenue composition: products vs services, subscription vs transactional, B2B vs B2C, hardware vs software | 10-K Item 1 "Products" / "Services" / "Revenue" subsection; 10-K Note "Disaggregation of revenue" | Med |
| BUS-02 | Customer concentration | 10-K Item 1A keyword "significant customer", "customer concentration", "10% of revenue" | High if Top1 > 10% |
| BUS-03 | Geographic revenue split + FX sensitivity | 10-K Note "Geographic information"; 10-K Item 7 "Foreign currency" | Med |
| BUS-04 | Industry position (market leader vs challenger vs long-tail) | 10-K Item 1 "Competition" subsection | Med |
| BUS-05 | Business-model archetype: high-margin low-turnover (software/SaaS) vs low-margin high-turnover (retail) vs capital-intensive (utility) | Derive from 10-K Item 1 + gross margin in Item 8 | Low (informational) |
| BUS-06 | Revenue-growth decomposition: organic vs acquired vs price vs volume | 10-K Item 7 MD&A; keywords "acquisition contributed", "organic growth", "price increase", "unit growth" | High if mostly inorganic |
| BUS-07 | Deferred-revenue trend vs reported-revenue trend | 10-K balance sheet line "Deferred revenue" / "Contract liabilities", compared YoY against revenue | High if deferred growth << revenue growth (future slowdown signal) |
| BUS-08 | Material adjusted-metric usage and definition consistency | Earnings releases + 10-K "Non-GAAP reconciliation"; keywords "Adjusted EBITDA", "Non-GAAP" | High if SBC excluded from Adjusted EBITDA |
| BUS-09 | Narrative buckets without defined methodology | Compound pattern: "AI revenue" OR "<theme> revenue" AND NOT (methodology paragraph in same section) | High if material % of total |
| BUS-10 | Information-tier discipline — what is fact vs management-defined | Cross-check: any number quoted by IR but absent from filings | High if material |
| BUS-11 | Contra-revenue / client incentives — the gross→net bridge | 10-K revenue-recognition note + MD&A; keywords "client incentives", "rebates", "incentives", "contra-revenue", "net revenue" | High for network/platform/marketplace; Med otherwise |
Severity Rubric
- High: A finding that would change the orchestrator's Good-Company score for "real growth" or "diversification". E.g., 60% of revenue from one customer; 40% of growth from acquisitions; "AI revenue" without methodology.
- Medium: A material structural fact the orchestrator needs to weight scenarios — e.g., 30% of revenue is FX-exposed; the company is #3 in a #1-takes-most market.
- Low: Useful context that does not move the verdict — e.g., a clean disaggregation of revenue by segment.
Evidence Rules
- Every Finding cites a filing section with at least one of: page number, item number, or note number.
- Direct quotes are preferred over paraphrase; cap each quote at 60 words.
- "I think" / "appears to" / "likely" without evidence → revise to evidence-based statement or drop the Finding.
Output Format
Findings
Order: High → Medium → Low. Within each severity, order by checklist ID.
[High|Medium|Low] Short Title
- ID:
BUS-NN (use the checklist ID; if multiple instances, append -a, -b)
- Citation:
10-K Item X, page Y (or Note Z)
- Evidence: direct quote ≤60 words
- Implication: one sentence describing what this means for the investment thesis
Suppressed Items
Items the orchestrator might expect but you found no evidence for — flag as [Suppressed] with one-line reason. Do not invent Findings to fill gaps.
Execution Status
Filings reviewed: 10-K (FY2024, filed 2025-02-15), 10-Q (Q3 2025)
Filing pre-scan: 9/10 items hit, 6 confirmed as findings
Skipped items: BUS-07 (deferred revenue not disclosed — company is non-subscription)
Summary
One line: N High / M Medium / K Low — most material: <BUS-NN short title>.
No-Finding Case
If the business is structurally healthy (no concentration, clean disaggregation, organic growth, defined non-GAAP metrics), output:
No business-model findings — structurally clean.
Notable positives: <BUS-NN: positive observation, e.g., "Top10 customer < 5% revenue">
Do not fabricate marginal findings to look thorough. Suppression discipline matters: orchestrator interprets "no findings" as evidence of quality.
Load References Selectively
references/business-model-patterns.md — load when classifying business-model archetype (BUS-05), when SaaS-specific subscriptions need NRR/ARR awareness, or when building the contra-revenue / gross→net bridge (BUS-11); covers high-margin-low-turnover vs low-margin-high-turnover taxonomies, revenue-disaggregation patterns, and the client-incentives bridge.
Review Discipline
You are one of 5 parallel workers. The orchestrator depends on you reporting only what you actually found in filings, with full citations. Over-reporting wastes the orchestrator's deduplication budget; fabrication breaks the entire analysis. When in doubt, suppress.
