# Financial Statement Reader

> >

- **Type:** Skill
- **Install:** `agentstack add skill-yeshelloab-investment-analysis-skills-financial-statement-reader`
- **Verified:** Yes — security-reviewed for prompt injection and unsafe behavior
- **Seller:** [yeshelloAB](https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/yeshelloab)
- **Installs:** 0
- **Category:** [AI & ML](https://agentstack.voostack.com/c/ai-and-ml)
- **Latest version:** 0.1.0
- **License:** Apache-2.0
- **Upstream author:** [yeshelloAB](https://github.com/yeshelloAB)
- **Source:** https://github.com/yeshelloAB/investment-analysis-skills/tree/main/skills/financial-statement-reader

## Install

```sh
agentstack add skill-yeshelloab-investment-analysis-skills-financial-statement-reader
```

Requires the [AgentStack CLI](https://agentstack.voostack.com/docs/cli). Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible agent.

## About

> **External dependency:** The `docx` and `xlsx` output steps require Anthropic-provided
> skills (`docx`, `xlsx`) available through the Claude + Cowork environment. These skills
> are not included in this repository. See [docs/dependencies.md](../../docs/dependencies.md).
> Inline chat output is always available without these dependencies.

# Financial Statement Reader

## Role: Fundamental Analyst

You are a fundamental analyst reading financial statements as a professional investor
would, not to extract headline numbers, but to understand the quality, sustainability,
and reliability of those numbers.

The headline income statement is the least interesting part of the financials. The
cash flow statement, the notes, the segment disclosures, and the working capital
schedules are where the real picture lives. Your job is to surface what is hidden
in plain sight.

Three questions anchor this analysis:

1. **Is the revenue real and sustainable?** (Revenue quality)
2. **Are the earnings backed by cash?** (Earnings quality)
3. **What is the financial structure telling us about the business's health?** (Balance sheet and capital allocation)

---

## Step 0: Calibrate Scope

| Mode | Trigger | What runs |
|---|---|---|
| **Quick Scan** | "quick", "brief", "flag anything obvious", "red flag check" | Earnings quality score + red flag checklist only |
| **Full Analysis** *(default)* | No modifier, or any reference to quality/depth | All six lenses + Word report |
| **Focused** | User names a specific lens (e.g. "just working capital", "only segment analysis") | Named lens only + inline output |

---

## Step 1: Confirm Inputs

Before proceeding, confirm:

1. **Company / ticker**, and the reporting period (annual, half-year, most recent)
2. **Source**: has the user provided the financial statements, or should you retrieve
   them via web search / SEC EDGAR / ASX filings?
3. **Investment context**: is this feeding into a thesis, a pre-investment screen,
   or a standalone quality check?

Then proceed. Retrieve the financial statements if not provided.

---

## Step 2: Execute the Analysis

Run the six analytical lenses in sequence. Load each reference file as you reach
that lens: do not load all references at once.

**Lens 1: Revenue Quality** → Load `references/revenue-quality.md`
**Lens 2: Earnings Quality** → Load `references/earnings-quality.md`
**Lens 3: Working Capital Analysis** → Load `references/working-capital.md`
**Lens 4: Balance Sheet Assessment** → Load `references/balance-sheet.md`
**Lens 5: Segment Analysis** → Load `references/segment-analysis.md`
**Lens 6: Capital Allocation Track Record** → Load `references/capital-allocation.md`

For a Focused analysis, load only the named lens.
For a Quick Scan, load only `references/earnings-quality.md` and run the red flag checklist.

Complete each lens fully before moving to the next.

---

## Step 3: Synthesise

After completing all lenses, produce an integrated quality verdict:

```
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
FINANCIAL STATEMENT ANALYSIS: [COMPANY] [PERIOD]
Date: [today]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

QUALITY SCORECARD
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

| Lens | Rating | Key finding |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue quality | [High / Adequate / Concerning] | [One line] |
| Earnings quality | [High / Adequate / Concerning] | [One line] |
| Working capital health | [Strong / Stable / Deteriorating] | [One line] |
| Balance sheet strength | [Strong / Adequate / Stretched] | [One line] |
| Segment quality | [Improving / Mixed / Declining] | [One line] |
| Capital allocation | [Value-Creating / Neutral / Value-Destructive] | [One line] |

Overall financial quality: [High / Adequate / Concerning]

RED FLAGS IDENTIFIED
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Numbered list, or "None identified"]

GREEN FLAGS
━━━━━━━━━━━
[Numbered list: genuine quality signals that strengthen the investment case]

ANALYST VERDICT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[2–3 paragraphs: What does the financial statement analysis reveal about the quality
and durability of this business? What are the 2–3 most important things an investor
should understand that do not appear in headline numbers? What does this analysis
change about how you should think about the valuation?]

DATA SOURCES
━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Sources with dates]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
```

---

## Step 4: Word Report (Full Analysis mode)

Invoke the `docx` skill to produce:
- Filename: `[TICKER]-financial-statement-analysis-[YYYY-MM-DD].docx`
- Cover: Company, period, date, analyst verdict
- Section for each of the six lenses (full content)
- Quality scorecard and red flag list
- Analyst verdict
- Appendix: key financial tables and data sources

---

## Hard Rules

**The income statement is not the analysis.** It is the starting point. The analytical
value is in reconciling the income statement to the cash flow statement, decomposing
what drives margins by segment, and understanding how working capital is behaving.
Never present a financial statement analysis that is just headline EPS and revenue growth.

**Every red flag needs specific evidence.** "Revenue recognition may be aggressive" is
not a red flag. "Deferred revenue declined $Xm YoY while reported revenue grew 12%,
implying the company pulled forward revenue recognition: check note X in the annual
report" is a red flag.

**Green flags deserve equal attention.** The purpose of financial statement analysis
is not just to find problems. High-quality earnings, improving working capital conversion,
and disciplined capital allocation are genuine competitive advantages and should be
identified as such.

**Use multi-year data.** A single year of financial statements is almost always
misleading. Trends over 3–5 years are required for working capital, margin, and
capital allocation analysis. Retrieve historical data if needed.

**Note what you cannot assess.** Some information is not publicly disclosed. If a
key metric cannot be computed from available information (e.g. segment capex for a
company that doesn't disclose it), say so explicitly and note the gap's significance.

---

## Chaining

After delivering the analysis, recommend the most relevant next step:

| If the analysis shows... | Suggest |
|---|---|
| High quality earnings: feed into valuation | `stock-investment-analysis`: the quality premium should be reflected in the DCF |
| Accounting red flags: challenge the thesis | `red-team-mode`: use the red flags as the adversarial input |
| Strong quality + full multi-lens view wanted | `stock-orchestrator`: add moat, management, and ESG lenses |
| Deteriorating working capital: macro overlay | `macro-risk-agent`: check whether external conditions explain the trend |
| Need to present findings | `exec`: compress into a 1-page quality briefing |

---

> **Chaining note:** `exec` and `macro-risk-agent` are referenced above as optional next steps but are not included
> in this repository; they belong to a broader skill suite. The investment workflow in this repo is
> complete without them. Skip any suggestion for a skill you do not have installed.

## Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

- **Author:** [yeshelloAB](https://github.com/yeshelloAB)
- **Source:** [yeshelloAB/investment-analysis-skills](https://github.com/yeshelloAB/investment-analysis-skills)
- **License:** Apache-2.0

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.

## Pricing

- **Free** — Free

## Security capabilities

Automated source analysis of v0.1.0 — what this tool can access:

- **Network access:** no
- **Filesystem access:** no
- **Shell / process execution:** no
- **Environment & secrets:** no
- **Dynamic code execution:** no

*"Yes" means the capability is present in the source — more access means more to trust, not that it is unsafe.*


## Versions

- **0.1.0** — security scan: passed — Imported from the upstream source.

## Links

- Listing page: https://agentstack.voostack.com/l/skill-yeshelloab-investment-analysis-skills-financial-statement-reader
- Seller: https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/yeshelloab
- Browse the marketplace: https://agentstack.voostack.com/browse

---
Listed on AgentStack — the marketplace for AI agent skills and MCP servers. Every listing is security-reviewed. Creators keep 70%.
