The mindset shift from "stock" to "business", and how to approach an annual report without drowning.

1. Up nextWhat fundamental analysis is trying to do9m
2. The company behind the ticker: working out what it actually sells10m
3. Your share of the business: share count, EPS and what the whole company costs10m
4. Where your return actually comes from11m
5. How to read an annual report12m

Income statement, balance sheet and cash flow — what each measures, and why the third one is the honest one.

1. The income statement11m
2. One-offs: the profit that will not happen again11m
3. The balance sheet11m
4. The cash flow statement11m
5. How the three statements connect10m

Valuation, profitability, leverage and efficiency — with the sector-specific ratios that general rules get wrong.

1. Market capitalisation and enterprise value: two ways to say what a company costs11m
2. Valuation ratios12m
3. Profitability and return ratios11m
4. Leverage, liquidity and efficiency ratios11m
5. Sector-specific analysis14m

Building a DCF, using relative valuation honestly, and the qualitative work no spreadsheet can do.

1. Three ways to put a number on a business11m
2. Discounted cash flow12m
3. Relative valuation and the margin of safety11m
4. If it is so cheap, why is it cheap?11m
5. Moats, management and red flags13m

From a universe of 5,000 companies to a written thesis — and the decision almost nobody plans for: when to sell.

1. A first pass on a company, in one evening12m
2. Screening, and writing a thesis you can be held to12m
3. How many companies can you actually follow?10m
4. Which news actually changes a thesis11m
5. When to sell11m

Business models and unit economics, the three investing styles, what dilution quietly costs you, how to think about cyclicals and turnarounds, and what a business in permanent decline is actually worth.

1. Business models and unit economics12m
2. Growth, value and quality: three ways to be right11m
3. Dilution: the cost that never appears as an expense10m
4. Cyclicals, turnarounds and special situations12m
5. The business that is shrinking, valued honestly13m
6. What a rights issue does to the share price8m

Industry analysis, capital allocation, forensic accounting, holding companies, valuing a bank properly, and reading the shareholding pattern.

1. Industry analysis: why the pond matters more than the fish12m
2. Capital allocation: what management does with the cash12m
3. Forensic accounting: finding what the numbers hide13m
4. The Altman Z-score: a bankruptcy early-warning11m
5. The Piotroski F-score: nine tests of quality10m
6. The Beneish M-score: sniffing out cooked books10m
7. Holding companies and the conglomerate discount11m
8. Valuing a bank properly12m
9. Reading the shareholding pattern10m
10. The Ohlson O-score: bankruptcy odds from nine numbers9m
11. The Montier C-score: six flags for a company cooking the books8m

Valuing insurers and loss-making new-age companies, scuttlebutt research, checklist investing, and what BRSR disclosure actually contains.

1. Valuing insurance companies12m
2. Valuing loss-making new-age companies12m
3. Scuttlebutt: research outside the filings11m
4. Checklist investing10m
5. BRSR: what sustainability disclosure actually contains10m
6. ESG scores, ratings and greenwashing9m

How accounting policy changes reported profit, what the auditor is really saying, reading segment data, mergers and demergers, and what credit rating agencies see that equity investors miss.

1. How two identical businesses report different profits14m
2. The auditor's report: qualifications, KAMs and silence11m
3. Segment reporting: the business inside the business11m
4. Mergers, demergers and value unlocking13m
5. Credit ratings and the debt market's view of your stock11m

Working capital and the cash conversion cycle, reading a concall transcript, return on incremental capital, valuing a PSU, and contingent liabilities.

1. Working capital: the cash that growth eats13m
2. Reading an earnings call transcript12m
3. Return on incremental capital12m
4. PSUs and the government as promoter12m
5. Contingent liabilities and what the balance sheet omits11m
6. The sustainable growth rate: how fast a company can grow on its own money8m

Pricing power, reading a company through its capex cycle, what the effective tax rate reveals, related party transactions, and free cash flow yield.

1. Pricing power: who can raise prices and keep the customer12m
2. Reading a company that is building12m
3. The tax line, and what it quietly tells you11m
4. Related party transactions12m
5. Free cash flow yield11m
6. ROIC: the truest test of a business’s quality11m
7. The Magic Formula: buy good companies cheap, by rank10m
8. The Rule of 40: growth and profit, on one line9m
9. Economic value added: profit after charging for all capital11m
10. Owner earnings: Buffett’s version of profit9m
11. Free cash flow to equity: the shareholder’s cash9m
12. CFROI: a return on capital that survives inflation and accounting9m

Reading the notes to accounts, concentration risk, management compensation, what happens when a company defaults, and a full side-by-side comparison.

1. The notes to accounts, read systematically12m
2. One customer, one product, one plant11m
3. What management is paid, and paid for11m
4. Default, IBC and where equity ranks12m
5. A full side-by-side comparison13m
6. Amortised cost and the effective interest method9m

Standalone versus consolidated, inventory and asset quality, currency exposure inside a business, valuing a real estate developer, and reading people costs.

1. Standalone, consolidated, and where problems hide12m
2. Inventory, depreciation and asset quality12m
3. Currency inside the business11m
4. Valuing a real estate developer12m
5. People costs, and what they reveal11m

Reverse DCF, market share over time, what a quarterly result does and does not tell you, analysing thin disclosure, and goodwill and intangibles.

1. Reverse DCF: what the price already assumes12m
2. The dividend discount model: valuing a stock by its payouts11m
3. CAPM: the price of risk, and your cost of equity11m
4. The Graham number: a quick fair-value sanity check9m
5. The two-stage DCF: high growth now, normal growth later12m
6. WACC: the blended cost every company must beat11m
7. Graham net-nets: buying a company for less than its cash10m
8. Market share: who is actually winning11m
9. What a quarterly result does and does not tell you11m
10. Analysing a company that tells you very little12m
11. Goodwill and intangibles11m
12. The Shiller PE (CAPE): a P/E that smooths the cycle9m

Implied expectations, comparing against real peers, judging capital allocation, separating a cycle from a structural decline, and reading an earnings call.

1. Operating leverage: why small revenue moves become big profit moves12m
2. Comparing a company with its actual peers12m
3. Judging management by where the cash went13m
4. Telling a cycle from a structural decline13m
5. Revenue quality: not every rupee of sales is worth the same12m
6. Channel stuffing: revenue borrowed from the future8m

EBITDA and what it hides, lease accounting after Ind AS 116, promoter pledging, AGM resolutions and proxy advisers, and reading a research report for what it is.

1. EBITDA, and why it is not cash12m
2. Leases on the balance sheet: what Ind AS 116 changed12m
3. Promoter pledging: the disclosure that predicts trouble12m
4. Your vote: AGMs, resolutions and proxy advisers11m
5. Reading a broker's research report for what it is12m

Accruals as a measurable number, capital work in progress, when book value means something, reading the deferred tax line, and founder succession risk.

1. Accruals: the gap between profit and cash, as a number13m
2. Capital work in progress, and the project that never finishes12m
3. Book value, and the businesses where it means anything12m
4. Deferred tax, and what it quietly reveals11m
5. What happens when the founder goes12m
6. When interest becomes an asset: capitalised borrowing costs9m
7. Gross block, net block, and how old the plant really is8m
8. Gross profitability: the cleanest measure of a good business8m
9. Tobin’s Q: is the market worth more than the assets underneath it?8m

Other comprehensive income, PLI and RoDTEP incentives in the P&L, trade payables as hidden borrowing, lock-in expiries and minimum public shareholding, and businesses whose prices a regulator fixes.

1. Other comprehensive income: the profit that never reaches the profit line13m
2. PLI, RoDTEP and the profits with an expiry date13m
3. Trade payables: the borrowing that never appears as debt14m
4. Lock-in expiries and the sellers who have a deadline12m
5. When a regulator sets the price13m

Reading the exchange announcements feed, pulling subsidiary accounts and registered charges from the MCA, mining a competitor’s offer document, checking a company’s claims against government data, and following a regulatory order through its appeal ladder.

1. The announcements feed: reading a company through what it is forced to file14m
2. Down to the registrar: what MCA filings show that the annual report does not14m
3. Somebody else’s prospectus: mining a competitor’s DRHP13m
4. Checking a claim against somebody else’s numbers13m
5. Orders, demands and disputes: reading the regulatory trail14m

Decomposing a growth rate into volume, price, mix and acquisition; reading the signs that a market is filling up; watching an industry change shape and knowing which number moves first; the arithmetic of a de-rating; and a procedure for telling a cheap company from a broken one.

1. Where the growth actually came from: volume, price, mix and acquisition14m
2. Saturation: how a market tells you it is filling up13m
3. When an industry changes shape, and which number moves first14m
4. The de-rating: why the price falls further than the profits13m
5. Cheap or broken: a procedure for a low multiple14m

Why a growth rate can be arithmetically perfect and still meaningless. Discontinued operations and the re-presented year, how a trailing twelve-month figure is actually stitched together, the appointed date that rewrites a closed year, the accounting change that lifts profit without moving cash, and a procedure for rebuilding a decade you can compare.

1. Discontinued operations: the day last year’s revenue was rewritten14m
2. The trailing twelve months, and the quarter that absorbs everything13m
3. The appointed date: when a merger rewrites a year that is already closed15m
4. When the rules change mid-series: policy, estimate and error14m
5. Rebuilding ten years you can actually compare15m

The repayment calendar hidden across three lines of the balance sheet, the interest a company is really paying once capitalisation is unwound, the mismatch between a long asset and short funding, the covenant that reclassifies a loan without any cash moving, and a twelve-month liquidity test you can run from published numbers.

1. The repayment calendar the ratio cannot show you13m
2. What the debt actually costs, worked backwards13m
3. Borrowing short to fund long13m
4. The covenant, and the clause that trips it14m
5. The twelve-month test you can run yourself14m
6. Bill discounting and factoring: leverage that can hide9m

Where a finance company’s money comes from and what it really costs, how a thin spread and a fat one produce the same return on equity by completely different routes, the provision that is an assumption rather than a measurement, the quarter of the loan book that has been sold and the profit booked in advance for it, and the year the capital ratio forces a share issue.

1. Where a lender’s money comes from, and what it actually costs14m
2. The same return on equity, arrived at two completely different ways14m
3. The loss that is an assumption, not a measurement15m
4. The book that is not on the balance sheet15m
5. The capital ceiling, and the year it forces a share issue15m

Reconciling a record order book against orders actually won, the estimate in the denominator that moves a quarter's margin without a rupee of extra work, the three balance sheet lines that hold a contractor's cash while receivable days look fine, why an expected loss is provided in full at once while a gain is not, and the profit that exists only in an arbitration file.

1. Record orders: inflow, book and what is actually executable13m
2. The percentage that decides the profit15m
3. Unbilled, retained and advanced: where a contractor's cash sits15m
4. The fixed price, and the loss that arrives all at once14m
5. Claims, awards and the profit that lives in a court15m

Two per cent of one company changing hands and reported revenue rising forty-five per cent; a joint venture with ₹1,800 crore of borrowings that appears as one line, until the year it appears as nothing; the same audited accounts giving a price-to-earnings ratio of either 21 or 33 depending on which of two profit figures you divide by; and a group generating ₹1,000 crore of cash while the entity whose shares you own can distribute a fraction of it.

1. Forty-nine per cent and fifty-one per cent, reported two different ways14m
2. The joint venture that is one line, and the year its losses stop appearing14m
3. Whose profit it is, and whose book value15m
4. A rupee earned two layers down, and what reaches the top14m

A quarter in which an IT company’s rupee revenue rose eight per cent while the business grew two; an FMCG company growing nine per cent while selling one per cent more; a pharma company whose best factory can stop exporting on a single letter; an automaker whose record month was stock sent to dealers; and a cement company whose whole year turns on ₹200 a tonne of fuel.

1. An IT services company is priced by the hour: reading one properly14m
2. Nine per cent growth, one per cent more soap: reading an FMCG company13m
3. A pharma company is three businesses and a list of factories15m
4. The record month that was stock sent to dealers: reading an automaker13m
5. A cement company is read per tonne, and region by region13m

A tariff increase of fifteen per cent that lifts a telecom operator’s operating profit by more than a quarter; a power company whose profit grows because the regulator lets it earn on new equity; a retailer whose 8.5% growth is half new stores; a hospital whose revenue rises fourteen per cent without a single new bed; and a steelmaker whose profit falls by a third when coking coal rises.

1. Telecom: a monthly bill, a tower and a licence paid for in advance13m
2. Power: a return the regulator allows, and a plant that must be available14m
3. Retail and restaurants: old stores, new stores, and the rent in between12m
4. Hospitals: sold by the occupied bed, day by day12m
5. Steel and metals: the spread between the product and the ore13m

An airline whose profit turns into a loss on a 10% rise in fuel; a refiner whose reported margin includes a gain on crude it merely held; a hotel whose profit rises a quarter on five more points of occupancy; a chemical plant that earns almost nothing in its first year; and an asset manager whose profit falls twice as fast as the market.

1. Airlines: a few paise between the fare and the fuel13m
2. Oil refining and marketing: a margin per barrel, and a gain on the crude in the tanks14m
3. Hotels: the room that earns nothing if it stays empty tonight12m
4. Specialty chemicals: a plant paid for today, earning its return in year three13m
5. Asset managers, brokers and exchanges: businesses that live on the market itself14m