guidance-tracker

name	guidance-tracker
description	Track management guidance accuracy over time for a given company
argument-hint	TICKER

Track management guidance accuracy for the company specified by the user: $ARGUMENTS

Before starting, read ../data-access.md for data access methods and ../design-system.md for formatting conventions. Follow the data access detection logic and design system throughout this skill.

Follow these steps:

1. Company Lookup

Look up the company by ticker using discover_companies. Capture:

• company_id
• latest_calendar_quarter — anchor for all period calculations below (see ../data-access.md Section 1.5)
• latest_fiscal_quarter
• Firm name for report attribution (default: "Daloopa") — see ../data-access.md Section 4.5

2. Discover Guidance Series

Search for series with keywords like "guidance", "outlook", "estimate", "forecast", "target" to find all available guidance metrics. Common guidance series include:

Financial guidance:

• Revenue guidance (quarterly and/or annual)
• EPS guidance
• Operating income / margin guidance
• EBITDA guidance
• Segment-level revenue guidance
• CapEx guidance
• Free Cash Flow guidance

Operational KPI guidance — many companies guide on KPIs, and tracking these beats/misses is often more informative than financial guidance:

• Subscriber / user count guidance (e.g., "we expect to add X million subscribers")
• Unit shipment guidance (e.g., "iPhone units", "deliveries")
• ARPU / ASP guidance
• Same-store sales guidance
• GMV / bookings guidance
• Net revenue retention guidance
• Store openings / closings guidance
• Production volume / capacity guidance

Search explicitly for KPI-specific guidance series using terms like "subscriber guidance", "unit guidance", "ARPU guidance", "same-store sales outlook", "deliveries forecast", "bookings target". These are separate from financial guidance and often reside in different series.

3. Pull Guidance Data

Calculate 8+ quarters backward from latest_calendar_quarter. Pull all discovered guidance series for those periods.

4. Pull Actual Results

For each guidance metric, pull the corresponding actual result series for the same periods.

5. Build Guidance vs Actuals Tracker

CRITICAL OFFSET RULES:

• Quarterly guidance: Guidance from Q(N) earnings call applies to Q(N+1) results. Compare Q(N) guidance -> Q(N+1) actual.
• Annual guidance from Q1/Q2/Q3: Applies to current fiscal year. Compare to FY actual.
• Annual guidance from Q4: Applies to NEXT fiscal year. Compare to next FY actual.

For each guidance-actual pair, calculate:

• Guidance value
• Actual value
• Delta (Actual - Guidance)
• Beat/Miss % ((Actual - Guidance) / |Guidance| x 100)
• Classification: Beat / In-line / Miss (use +/-1% threshold for in-line)

6. Pattern Analysis

Analyze the guidance track record:

• Overall beat rate (% of quarters where actual > guidance)
• Average beat/miss magnitude
• Trend in guidance accuracy (getting tighter? more conservative? less reliable?)
• Any metrics where management is notably conservative or aggressive
• Guidance range width trends (if range guidance is given)

Management credibility assessment:

• If the company consistently beats by a similar margin, call out sandbagging — this suggests management is deliberately setting low bars, which can mask underlying deceleration. A 100% beat rate is not necessarily bullish; it may mean guidance is uninformative.
• If guidance has been cut or missed, assess whether management acknowledged the miss honestly or buried it in adjusted metrics.
• Flag any pattern where qualitative language ("strong demand," "robust pipeline") didn't translate to actual results.

7. Commentary from Filings

Search SEC filings/documents across multiple queries to build a complete picture of guidance practices. If any search returns empty, try alternative keywords before giving up.

• Explicit guidance language: Try "guidance", "outlook"; fallback to "expect", "anticipate", "forecast"
• Qualitative / directional guidance: Try "similar to", "consistent with", "growth rate"; fallback to "low single digit", "mid single digit", "high single digit", "double digit", "sequential"
  • Many companies provide directional revenue guidance on earnings calls (e.g., "similar to the March quarter" or "low-to-mid-single-digit growth") rather than numeric ranges. Capture these and compare against actual growth rates.
• Guidance methodology changes: Try "change", "methodology", "no longer providing"; fallback to "withdraw", "suspend", "discontinue"
  • Flag any quarters where the company changed what metrics it guides on, or withdrew guidance entirely
• Key drivers behind guidance: Try "assumes", "includes", "excludes"; fallback to "headwind", "tailwind", "impact"
  • Capture what management said about the assumptions underpinning their guidance (e.g., FX assumptions, macro assumptions, one-time items included/excluded)

Extract direct management quotes where available and cite the document source.

7.5. Guidance Read-Throughs to Adjacent Companies

When a company raises, cuts, or materially changes its guidance, the implications often matter more for adjacent names than for the company itself. This section translates guidance signals into actionable read-throughs.

For each major guidance change identified in the tracker, analyze the implications for adjacent companies:

Identify who is affected by this company's guidance:

• Suppliers: Revenue/CapEx guidance changes directly affect supplier order books. A CapEx guidance raise is a near-term purchase order for equipment/component suppliers. A revenue guide-down signals softer demand flowing upstream.
• Customers: If this company supplies critical inputs, pricing or capacity guidance affects customer margins. Guiding for price increases = margin headwind for customers. Guiding for capacity expansion = supply relief.
• Competitors: Guidance on market growth, pricing environment, or demand trends is often the most honest signal about the competitive landscape. If Company A guides for share gains, that's a direct share loss for Company B.
• Channel partners / distributors: Volume guidance changes affect channel inventory and distributor revenue.

For each read-through (aim for 4-6), state:

1. The guidance data point — which metric changed, by how much, and in which quarter's call
2. The affected company (ticker + name)
3. The implication — bullish or bearish, with specific logic
4. Timing — is this a next-quarter impact or a multi-quarter trend?

Focus on the highest-signal guidance changes:

• Guidance raises after a period of conservatism → strong signal that the underlying business is inflecting
• Guidance cuts or "reaffirmed" when the market expected a raise → often more bearish than an explicit cut
• New metrics being guided on (or old metrics withdrawn) → management is redirecting attention, which itself is a signal
• Segment-level guidance changes → more specific read-throughs than consolidated figures
• KPI guidance (subscriber adds, unit volumes, ARPU) → often the most direct read-through to suppliers and competitors

Example:

• "NFLX raised Q2 subscriber guidance from +5M to +8M → Negative for DIS+, WBD: attention economy is zero-sum; NFLX's accelerating growth likely pressures competing streamers' subscriber adds. Positive for cloud/CDN names (AMZN/AWS, NET): more streaming = more infrastructure demand."
• "TSMC raised full-year CapEx guidance by $4B (from $32B to $36B) → Positive for ASML: TSMC is ASML's largest customer; incremental CapEx skews toward EUV tools. Positive for AMAT, LRCX, KLAC: broader equipment spend benefits all semicap names."

Web research for validation: Run 1 targeted search: "{TICKER} guidance change implications read through {year}" — analyst commentary on cross-company signals from guidance moves.

Source quality (MANDATORY): Follow ../data-access.md Section 2.5 — cite only primary sources (SEC filings, IR pages, press releases, transcripts) and Tier-1 financial press (Reuters, Bloomberg, WSJ, FT). Never use or cite Yahoo Finance editorial, Benzinga, Seeking Alpha, Motley Fool, Zacks, TipRanks, StockTwits, Reddit, or similar aggregators/blogs.

Present as a structured section in the report after the Pattern Analysis, grouped by guidance change (each major guide raise/cut gets its own sub-block with the read-throughs beneath it).

8. Save Report

Save to reports/{TICKER}_guidance_tracker.html using the HTML report template from ../design-system.md. Write the full analysis as styled HTML with the design system CSS inlined. This is the final deliverable — no intermediate markdown step needed.

The report should include:

• Summary header with company name, ticker, and period covered
• Quarter mapping reference table showing the +1 offset explicitly:

  | Guidance Source Quarter | Guidance Applies To | Actual Result Quarter |
  | CQ1 2024               | CQ2 2024            | CQ2 2024              |
  | CQ2 2024               | CQ3 2024            | CQ3 2024              |
  

  This makes the offset rule visible and auditable for every row in the tracker.
• Main tracker table with columns: Guidance Source, Metric, Guidance, Actual Period, Actual, Delta, Beat/Miss (with Daloopa citations on all values)
• Summary statistics (beat rate, avg beat/miss by metric)
• Pattern analysis narrative
• Guidance read-throughs to adjacent companies (grouped by guidance change, with affected tickers and implications)
• Key guidance quotes from filings with document citations

All financial figures must use Daloopa citation format: <a href="https://daloopa.com/src/{fundamental_id}">$X.XX million</a>

Tell the user where the HTML report was saved.

Highlight the key patterns (e.g., "Management has beat revenue guidance 7 of the last 8 quarters by an average of 2.3%"). Include an honest credibility verdict: Is management's guidance informative or performative? Should investors trust the forward guidance, and if not, what should they anchor to instead?