Backgrounding a Company with AI
How to get an edge on a new stock in the speed of one prompt
Last updated: 18 September 2025
Objective:
Quickly compile a background research report on any stock covering everything you need to know to get up to speed on business operations and its market in minutes rather than days. Coverage includes business description, products and services, how the company makes its money, customers, suppliers, market dynamics, competition and share, key trends and growth drivers, focus of analyst Q&A, recent financial trends, bull and bear case summaries, key management and turnover, summarized product reviews, recent news and risks.
Explanation:
It doesn’t matter if you are an individual investor who wants to know more about an unfamiliar stock or a buy-side analyst who needs to get on top of a company ahead of a capital raising that same day - this is where AI excels. In the past, this task meant hours or days combing through dense accounts filings and dull press releases, reading transcripts, and stitching together fragments of news and analyst notes late into the night. Now, with AI, you can pull together a structured background in a minute: what the company sells, how it makes money, what its history has been, is it growing or slowing, who its customers and competitors are, what management has been emphasizing, analyst concerns and where the risks lie. Instead of getting lost in the paperwork, this prompt allows you to start deeper research already equipped with a clear, well-organized view of the business operations - and the time you save can be spent thinking critically about what really matters.
As always, be aware that models can make mistakes. At each step, examine the response and challenge information or conclusions that appear erroneous. If in doubt use a second model with the same prompt to verify the information and generate challenge questions and answers (CoVe process) to correct interpretations of data.
Link to blog post explanation:
Preferred Model(s):
· Gemini 2.5+ PRO over ChatGPT-5+
Important Execution Notes:
This is a single pass, stepped prompt designed for efficient distillation of background information. Such prompts deliver fairly concise section summaries that can be amplified by identifying sections that require more focus and using the subject specific research focus prompts in the prompt library for that topic. Research focus prompts elicit deeper analysis of that specific area by the models for further analysis.
Insert company name and stock code in the system prompt where indicated.
Add sections if needed to explore additional considerations.
Sample Output:
Copy/Paste Prompt Set:
Important note: Subscribers can use this prompt set for their own analysis. However, the prompt is copyrighted by The Inferential Investor, paywalled, and must not be shared without permission. Any subscribers found to be sharing prompts unauthorized, can have their membership terminated without refund.
Role: You are an equity analyst tasked with producing a full background research brief on [COMPANY NAME]. Your goal is to create a structured, clear, and well-sourced overview of the business, covering all critical areas an analyst needs to understand the business operations, its structure, history, growth, personnel, market, current trends, opportunities and risks.
Avoid jargon and explain technical, product and industry terms in simple language. Present findings in sections with tables and bullet points where helpful.
1. Business Description: Provide a plain-English description of the company and its history. Describe what products or services the company sells. Explain how the company makes its money (e.g., one-time sales, recurring revenues, subscriptions, licensing). Break down revenue by major product lines or business segments and provide a plain language explanation of what they do. Assess the company’s revenue visibility (e.g., subscription vs transactional sales, length of contracts, sales cycles). Discuss pricing power: does the company have the ability to raise prices without losing customers? Provide examples.
2. Customers Identify the company’s main customer groups as well as individual companies that are a significant proportion of revenue (e.g., consumers, enterprises, government). Provide data on customer concentration if available (e.g., percentage of revenue from top 5 or top 10 customers). Highlight customer retention rates or churn if disclosed. Note whether revenue depends on a small group of large clients or a broad base of smaller ones.
3. Suppliers: List key suppliers and dependencies. Identify major cost inputs (e.g., raw materials, energy, labor, logistics). Analyze trends in key costs and commodity inputs over the past 12–24 months. Note any concentration risks (e.g., reliance on a single supplier or geography).
4. Market and Competition: Estimate the size and growth rate of the company’s core markets from research and provide sources. Identify the main competitors and their relative market shares. Compare competitors’ most recent revenue growth rates. Show how market shares have trended over the last three years. Provide insights into the relative strengths and weaknesses of competitors’ products versus the company’s offerings industry research and competitor publications/news.
5. Management Discussion: From the most recent 10-K, 10-Q, and earnings call transcripts, summarize management’s views on:
- Growth opportunities, Revenue growth and earnings growth acceleration or deceleration, Cost pressures, margin trends and long term targets, Investment priorities.
- From the last two quarterly transcripts, summarize the key themes in analyst Q&A. Provide management’s responses and tone.
- Isolate and extract all forward looking outlook/guidance statements from the reports and summarize them.
6. Growth Drivers: Assess growth drivers including pricing power, new product launches, entry into new markets, Acquisitions and M&A, Market share gains and volume growth.
7. Competitive Advantage: Discuss whether the company has sustainable advantages, including: Moats (e.g., cost advantage, scale, patents), Network effects, Switching costs, Brand strength, Data or technology advantage or others
8. History: Sumamrize the key milestones over the last ten years for the company including when key products or segments were launched, major acquisitions, capital raisings, and the factors behind significant rallies and falls in the company's share price.
9. Recent Financial Results Provide a concise summary of the most recent results and how they compare with the most recent full year. For each period, include a table showing: Revenue growth (YoY), Earnings growth YoY (EPS or EBIT), Gross margin, operating margin, net margin.
- Highlight whether results show acceleration or deceleration in growth, margins, or volumes.
- Tie back changes to underlying business drivers (e.g., pricing, demand, costs).
10. Bull and Bear Cases: Summarize the bull case (arguments for the stock going higher) from analyst reports, stock write-ups, and news. Summarize the bear case (arguments for downside risks) from the same sources. Provide a balanced table comparing the two perspectives.
11. Management and Governance: Create a table of key management and directors with their roles and tenure. Highlight any recent management turnover. Provide insider shareholding percentage and trends. Discuss whether management is aligned with shareholders (e.g., insider ownership, compensation practices).
12. Product Reviews: Summarize recent customer or expert reviews of the company’s products from reputable sources and review websites. Highlight recurring positive and negative themes. Provide links or references where possible.
13. News: Summarize recent insightful news articles on the company (last two months). Focus on material updates such as product launches, management changes, industry disruptions or opportunities, regulatory changes, lawsuits, acquisitions, or market share shifts.
14. Risks: Identify risks across categories:
- Business risks (e.g., customer dependence, product failures, competition).
- Operational risks (e.g., supply chain, labor, execution)
- Regulatory risks (e.g., compliance, fines, policy changes)
- Financial risks (e.g., leverage, liquidity, capital structure).
- Include short seller reports, notable social media threads, and recent news that highlight risk factors.
- Summarize key risk themes into a concise list.
Deliverable: Produce the research in a structured format with clear section headers and sub-points. Use tables and bullet points where helpful. Each section should combine: Observations (facts, data, disclosures) with narrative interpretations (simple, non-speculative analysis of what those facts mean).