Key Takeaways
- 5 prompts that translate any earnings report
- Paste the real numbers in — AI can't see live filings
- Verify key figures against the official report
Earnings Season Doesn't Have to Feel Like a Foreign Language
Four times a year, every public company publishes an earnings report — and most investors either skim the headline number or skip the report entirely. The problem usually isn't intelligence. It's that earnings releases are written by accountants, for accountants.
This is the first specialist guide in our AI-prompts investing cluster. If you want the general method first, start with How to Use ChatGPT to Analyze Stocks Before Buying: 6 Powerful AI Prompts. Here, we go one level deeper: five prompts that turn a single earnings report into a plain-English picture of a company's health.
One rule before the prompts: paste the numbers in yourself. Copy the key figures from the company's actual earnings release — revenue, net income, earnings per share (EPS), cash flow, debt — and put them in the prompt. An AI working from figures you supplied can explain them well. An AI working from memory can be confidently out of date.
Prompt 1: Translate the Report Into Plain English
"Here are the key numbers from [company]'s latest earnings report: [paste revenue, net income, EPS, operating cash flow]. Explain each number in plain English, in one or two sentences each, and tell me what it says about how the business actually performed this quarter. Do not add any figures I didn't give you."
This is the highest-value prompt of the five. Revenue tells you what the company sold. Net income tells you what was left after every cost. EPS spreads that profit across each share. Operating cash flow tells you whether real money moved, or whether the "profit" is mostly accounting.
Prompt 2: Compare This Quarter With the Same Quarter Last Year
"Using only the figures I pasted, compare this quarter with the same quarter last year. Which numbers grew, which shrank, and which grew faster than revenue? Show the percentage change for each and show your math."
Growth only means something in context. If revenue rose 8% but costs rose 14%, the business got bigger and less profitable at the same time — a very different story from the headline.
A worked example (fictional company, real method). Imagine a Canadian bank — call it Bank North — reports revenue of $3.2 billion, up from $2.95 billion a year ago, and EPS of $1.85, up from $1.62. The comparison prompt does the arithmetic for you: revenue grew about 8.5%, EPS grew about 14.2%. Profits growing faster than revenue usually means margins improved — and that becomes the next question to ask, not a conclusion to bank on.
Prompt 3: Separate Real Growth From One-Time Items
"Based on the notes I pasted from this earnings report, list anything that looks like a one-time gain or one-time cost — asset sales, write-downs, restructuring charges, legal settlements. Then tell me what the quarter would look like without those items."
Companies love a clean headline, and one-time items are where messy quarters get polished. A profit jump powered by selling a building is not the same as a profit jump powered by selling more product.
Prompt 4: Hunt for the Warning Signs
"Act like a skeptical analyst. Using only the figures I provided, point out anything that could be a warning sign: rising debt, shrinking margins, cash flow falling while profit rises, or costs growing faster than revenue. For each one, tell me what extra information I should check in the full report."
Profit rising while operating cash flow falls is the classic example — it can be innocent timing, or it can be the first crack. The prompt's job is to aim your attention, not to deliver a verdict.
Prompt 5: Summarize the Outlook — and What to Verify Next
"Summarize what management said about the months ahead, using only the outlook text I pasted. Then give me a short checklist: the three figures from this report I should verify against the official filing, and the two questions I should look to have answered next quarter."
What a Good Answer Looks Like — and What It Doesn't Prove
A good run of these five prompts gives you a one-page story: what the company sold, what it kept, whether the growth was real, where the risks sit, and what management expects next. That is a genuine head start over reading the release cold.
It does not prove the numbers are right. The AI only knows what you pasted, it can still misread a figure, and it cannot see the full financial statements, the footnotes, or the conference call. Treat the output as a reading guide — then confirm the two or three figures that matter most in the official report itself. Our capstone guide, on fact-checking AI stock research before you invest, turns that habit into a system.
And if you're still deciding whether AI belongs in your process at all, Can ChatGPT Pick Winning Stocks? What AI Gets Right and Wrong is the honest answer.
This piece is part of Twikup's ChatGPT-for-investors series. Next in the series: check if a stock is overvalued or undervalued.
The Twikup Take
Earnings reports stop being intimidating the moment someone translates them — and that's a job AI genuinely does well, as long as you feed it the real numbers and check its work. Five prompts, ten minutes, one much clearer picture of what you own or are about to buy. Next in the cluster: using the same approach to judge whether a stock's price is fair in the first place.
Image: Illustrative image.