What a Company's Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement Tell You

What you need

The snapshot template is optional, and this prompt does not use it. What it needs are the company's own figures. Open the latest annual report, usually in the investor relations section of the company's website (US companies also file theirs with the SEC as Form 10-K), and copy these lines into the prompt:

• Company: [name or ticker]
• Figures from the latest annual report: [fiscal year, currency and units, then revenue, operating profit, net profit, total assets, total liabilities, equity, cash, borrowings, operating cash flow and capital expenditure]
• Same figures for the year before: [figures, or "not available"]

Most annual reports print the previous year in a column next to the current one, so the third line rarely means extra searching. Copy the figures in the currency and units the report uses, such as EUR millions, and say which. Take them from the consolidated statements, which cover the whole group. Leave out "adjusted" figures from press releases unless you label them, because each company defines those its own way.

This works for a company. A fund or ETF has no income statement of this kind, so if you enter one, the prompt asks the model to say so and point you to the fund's factsheet and annual report.

Here is my financial snapshot. Use only these numbers.

Currency: [e.g. EUR]
Date: [today's date]
Age: [optional]

ASSETS
[name] — [category: cash / stocks / ETFs / crypto / property / metals / other] — [value]
[name] — [category] — [value]
...

LIABILITIES
[name] — [type: mortgage / car loan / credit card / student loan / other] — [outstanding balance] — [interest rate if known]
...

CONTEXT (optional but improves the answer)
Monthly income after tax: [amount]
Monthly spending: [amount]
Amount I add to savings or investments each month: [amount]
Value of the same assets 12 months ago: [amount]

The prompt

Copy this exact text and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini directly beneath your snapshot block.

You are a financial analyst teaching me to read a company's accounts.

Company: [name or ticker]
Latest annual report, fiscal year [year], currency and units [e.g. EUR millions]:
Revenue [ ], operating profit [ ], net profit [ ]
Total assets [ ], total liabilities [ ], equity [ ], cash [ ], borrowings [ ]
Operating cash flow [ ], capital expenditure [ ]
Same figures for the year before: [figures, or "not available"]

1. Describe in two or three sentences what the company does and how it earns
   its revenue.
2. For each of the three statements, explain what it measures and what my
   figures show. Show the arithmetic for growth, margins and free cash flow.
3. Compare the latest year with the year before and name the largest change.
4. Say which figures look high or low against what is typical for this
   industry, and explain why companies in it tend to look that way.
5. Point out anything that deserves a closer look, such as profit rising while
   operating cash flow falls, or borrowings growing faster than revenue.

If the holding is a fund or ETF, say so and tell me which fund documents to
read instead. Use only my figures; if one is missing, ask me for it instead of
estimating. No buy, sell or hold opinion and no other stocks to consider.

What good output looks like

The answer should open with two or three sentences on the business, then take the statements one at a time. Say the invented figures are in EUR millions: revenue 12,400 against 11,200 the year before, operating profit 1,550 and net profit 1,100. The model should show revenue growth of 10.7%, an operating margin of 12.5% and a net margin of 8.9%, each with its division.

It then places those margins in the industry. A 12.5% operating margin would be low for many software companies and high for most supermarket chains, so the answer should place the company before judging the number. Ratios do not depend on currency, so a company reporting in US dollars needs no conversion into your own.

On the balance sheet, the model relates borrowings to cash and equity. With borrowings of 3,000, cash of 800 and equity of 5,000, net debt is 2,200, or 44% of equity. The answer explains what that level means for a business with steady sales compared with a cyclical one.

The cash flow statement is where the three statements check each other. Operating cash flow of 1,600 minus capital expenditure of 700 leaves free cash flow of 900, below the net profit of 1,100. One year proves little; profit running ahead of cash year after year would deserve a question to the company.

What this can't tell you

The analysis is only as accurate as the lines you copy. Without a browsing tool, the model has no current share price and no access to the newest filing, so anything it adds from memory may come from an older report or a similarly named company.

Two years of accounts are too few to call a trend. The model cannot audit the numbers, spot what the report hides, or read the notes you left out, where leases, pensions and one-off items often sit. It does not know how accounting or tax rules apply in the company's country or in yours. Margins and growth rates are simple divisions that models still get wrong, so redo them. Nothing here says what the share will do.

Doing this without the retyping

On this page you type the company and a dozen figures before every run. In Sumio, "Financial Statements Overview" is one of the 62 prompts built into the AI assistant, which comes with Premium. You run it on a stock you already track there, and the app supplies the holding's details and price history. Your records are stored on your device. When you run the analysis, the figures it needs are sent to an AI provider.