Research and explainers
Evergreen company research, comparisons, stock ideas and explainers.
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Symbotic’s balance sheet is growing faster than revenue
Symbotic’s assets are expanding faster than sales, while revenue growth has slowed to 20.6%. Strong cash generation offers a more favourable reading, but its durability matters more than the balance sheet’s size.
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How to read an earnings report: revenue, EPS, guidance and the estimate
An earnings report is read in order: revenue growth, GAAP versus adjusted EPS, the analysts' estimate, guidance, then cash flow. GE Aerospace's filing for the quarter to 30 September 2026 shows what that sequence reveals beyond the headline profit figure.
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Coherent's net income rose 1,530.7% while operating cash flow fell 87.5%
Coherent Corp.'s trailing twelve-month profit has surged on paper even as the cash it actually collects has collapsed, a split the company's filings don't spell out, even as a capital spending programme now consuming 15.5% of revenue has separately drained free cash flow.
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PTC: free cash flow growth of 10.1% trails net income's 138.7% rise
PTC's trailing twelve-month free cash flow rose 10.1% while net income rose 138.7%, a gap that shows up in margins, capital spending and buybacks rather than in the top line.
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Atlassian earnings improve while operating cash flow falls 7.3%
Atlassian is approaching accounting profitability, yet operating cash flow is shrinking. Revenue growth and wider operating margins support the recovery, but weaker cash conversion complicates the assessment of its durability.
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Atlassian free cash flow fell 6.8% as earnings improved
Atlassian’s earnings improved, but free cash flow fell 6.8% as revenue expanded. Lower capital spending cushioned the cash decline, leaving the main concern in operating cash generation.
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Palo Alto Networks’ balance sheet is growing faster than revenue
Palo Alto Networks’ asset expansion is outpacing sales while operating profitability weakens. Free cash flow is still growing, but its falling margin complicates the case that a larger balance sheet will produce stronger returns.
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10-K vs 10-Q: what each SEC filing is and how to read it
A 10-K is Apple's audited annual report; a 10-Q is its unaudited quarterly update between annual filings. This explainer sets out the differences in timing, audit and detail, what to read first in each, and where the 8-K fits, using Apple's own filed figures.
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Free cash flow conversion: what it is and how to read it
Free cash flow conversion shows how much of a company's profit becomes cash, found by subtracting capital expenditure from operating cash flow. The free cash flow yield then compares that figure with a company's value. Microsoft's filings show free cash flow falling as net income rises.
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Owner earnings: what free cash flow after stock pay means for a valuation
Owner earnings is free cash flow minus stock-based compensation, a cost that never appears as a cash outflow but still dilutes shareholders. Adobe's filings, which show $9.3bn of share buybacks against 40.8% free cash flow margin, illustrate why the gap matters for valuation.
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Reverse DCF: how to work out what growth a share price implies
A reverse DCF model starts from a price and works backwards to the growth rate needed to justify it, rather than forecasting growth to produce a price.
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Stock buybacks vs dividends: what actually reaches shareholders
A buyback announcement does not by itself mean fewer shares outstanding, because new stock issued to employees can work against it. Using Apple's filed buyback, dividend and share-count figures, this explainer shows how shareholder yield and the net share change appear in a filing.
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QS’s latest filing: cash use improved as shares rose
QuantumScape’s trailing cash outflow narrowed year on year, while its diluted share count increased. The new filing points to progress in cash use alongside continued dilution.
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Six companies that grow, convert cash and shrink their share count: what the filings show
A screen of SEC filings for double-digit growth, free cash flow of at least a quarter of revenue and a falling share count returns fourteen names. We read the figures behind the top six and the caveat each one carries.
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Buyback Monitor, 2026-Q4: Dropbox leads a table where buybacks outrun free cash flow
Dropbox leads the 2026-Q4 Buyback Monitor with its diluted share count down 18.25% in a year, ahead of Pegasystems and CarGurus. Across the 58 companies ranked, the pattern to watch is buyback spending running ahead of free cash flow.
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Datadog vs Dynatrace: what the filings show
Datadog's revenue grew 31.5% on a trailing-twelve-month basis and is accelerating; Dynatrace's grew 17.9%, the slowest in its filed history. Yet Dynatrace runs a 12.1% operating margin to Datadog's 0.4%. A dimension-by-dimension read of two observability vendors' SEC filings.
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NVIDIA's profits are growing far faster than the cash behind them
NVIDIA's trailing-twelve-month net income grew 122.7% year over year; free cash flow grew 76.3%. Both are extraordinary, but the gap between booked profit and banked cash is now wide enough to deserve its own explanation, and the filings' structured data alone cannot supply one.
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Adobe's free cash flow machine is quietly buying back the company
Adobe converts roughly 41 cents of every revenue dollar into free cash flow and is using it to retire more than 6% of its diluted shares a year. The cash economics remain among the strongest a software company can show. The debate is what they're worth.
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One of these four cash machines is not like the others
We computed trailing-twelve-month capex intensity and free-cash-flow margin for the four companies in our coverage universe. The AI buildout's cost is concentrated almost entirely in one of them, and the free-cash-flow consequences are now the widest in the dataset.