Public companies tell you almost everything you need to know about them. The catch is that it's spread across hundreds of pages of filings written for lawyers. If you are preparing for a sales call, an interview, or a first look at a deal, you don't need all of it. You need the right ten pages.
Start with the 10-K, but not at page one
Skip to Item 1 (Business) for what the company sells and how it makes money, then Item 1A (Risk Factors) and read only the first few risks. Companies tend to list the ones that worry them most first.
Pull three years of numbers
In Item 8 (Financial Statements), take revenue, net income and operating cash flow for three years. Direction matters more than any single number. Is revenue growing while cash flow shrinks? Write that down.
Check the 8-Ks for what changed recently
8-Ks are filed for material events: leadership changes, acquisitions, new debt. Scan the last twelve months. A new CFO or a big acquisition changes the conversation you're about to have.
Use the proxy statement (DEF 14A) for people and pay
The proxy tells you who's on the board, who the executives are, and what they're paid to achieve. Incentive targets show you what leadership really cares about.
Ownership and insiders
Forms 3, 4 and 13F show who owns the stock and whether insiders are buying or selling. You don't need to go deep, just enough to know who has influence.
Put it on one page
The real value comes from putting it all into one structured brief, in the same order every time, with a source for every fact. That's the idea behind a research dossier for a target company: the business, the people, the numbers, ownership and recent events, all cited back to the filing.
You can do this by hand in about 30 minutes once you know where to look. If you do it every week, it's worth automating. That's why I built TargetDossier.
Also published on Medium: https://medium.com/@contact_98431/reading-sec-filings-fast-how-to-build-a-public-company-brief-in-30-minutes-6ca01f7f4e20
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