Technology Specialist: SaaS / Cloud Specific Metrics Analysis
Calculate and analyze the performance of SaaS / Cloud Software businesses using industry-specific metrics
Last updated: 17 December 2025
Objective:
This prompt is designed to produce an institutional-grade analysis of any SaaS or cloud stock by systematically extracting, calculating, and benchmarking industry-specific operating and financial metrics across the last three periods. The objective is to translate these metrics into clear insights on growth durability, unit economics, and valuation support, enabling an investor to assess both the current quality of the business and the conditions required for future upside or downside.
Explanation:
This prompt is structured to replicate the way professional technology investors evaluate SaaS and cloud businesses, starting from disciplined source extraction and moving through metric calculation, benchmarking, and synthesis. It forces the analysis to anchor on primary disclosures such as financial statements, earnings materials, and transcripts, while explicitly identifying and filling disclosure gaps through targeted web research where necessary. By calculating each key metric consistently across the last three periods, the prompt emphasizes not just absolute performance but direction of travel, allowing the analyst to distinguish between durable structural strength and short-term noise.
The metrics analyzed span growth, revenue durability, unit economics, efficiency, profitability, and valuation context, which together define the economic quality of a SaaS or cloud model. Measures such as ARR growth, NRR, and RPO capture the sustainability and visibility of future revenue, while gross margin, sales efficiency, and free cash flow margins reveal whether scale is translating into economic leverage. Customer metrics like LTV and CAC and LTV/CAC ratios are examined. Benchmarking these metrics against peers and best-in-class ranges enables a forward-looking assessment of valuation support, clarifying which metrics must improve, stabilize, or defend current levels for the stock to justify multiple expansion or avoid compression.
As always, be aware that models can make mistakes. At each step, examine the response and challenge information or conclusions that appear erroneous before proceeding to any subsequent steps. 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:
N/A
Preferred Model(s):
ChatGPT 5.2+ preferred for its depth of reasoning and analysis. Gemini 3 if you need greater data accuracy with respect to valuation multiples (through its link to Google Finance)
Important Execution Notes:
Insert the stock, ticker, name and exchange where indicated
Specify the sub-industry to align to most appropriate metrics for the business and the periods to analyze
Optional: specify 5-10 tickers of competitor stocks to benchmark against where able.
Attached to the prompt the last 2 sets of accounts (eg 10-Ks, 10-Q,s semi or annual reports). Also attached last 2 presentations where available and last 2 call transcripts (for KPIs and guidance not disclosed in filings)
Sample Output:
Copy/Paste Prompt Set:
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