guidance-tracker

Track management guidance accuracy for the company named in the user's request. If no ticker or company is provided, ask for one before proceeding. **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 $36B) → **Positive for ASML**: TSMC is ASML's largest customer; incremental CapEx skews toward EUV tools. **Positive for AMAT, LRCX, KLAC**: broader equipment spend benefits all semicap names." **Web research for validation:** Run 1 targeted search: `"{TICKER} guidance change implications read through {year}"` — analyst commentary on cross-company signals from guidance moves. Present as a structured section in the report after the Pattern Analysis, grouped by guidance change (each major guide raise/cut gets its own sub-block with the read-throughs beneath it). ## 8. Save Report Save to `reports/{TICKER}_guidance_tracker.html` using the HTML report template from `../design-system.md`. Write the full analysis as styled HTML with the design system CSS inlined. This is the final deliverable — no intermediate markdown step needed. The report should include: - Summary header with company name, ticker, and period covered - Quarter mapping reference table showing the +1 offset explicitly: ``` | Guidance Source Quarter | Guidance Applies To | Actual Result Quarter | | CQ1 2024 | CQ2 2024 | CQ2 2024 | | CQ2 2024 | CQ3 2024 | CQ3 2024 | ``` This makes the offset rule visible and auditable for every row in the tracker. - Main tracker table with columns: Guidance Source, Metric, Guidance, Actual Period, Actual, Delta, Beat/Miss (with Daloopa citations on all values) - Summary statistics (beat rate, avg beat/miss by metric) - Pattern analysis narrative - Guidance read-throughs to adjacent companies (grouped by guidance change, with affected tickers and implications) - Key guidance quotes from filings with document citations All financial figures must use Daloopa citation format: `<a href="https://daloopa.com/src/{fundamental_id}">$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?