Briefs Terminal lets you size up any public company in about ten minutes. Search a ticker and you see what the stock costs, how much the company earns, how fast its sales are growing, and how much it pays you in dividends.
Scroll down and it lines those numbers up against the company's closest competitors, then gives you the full financial statements from its SEC filings and transcripts of what management said on its earnings calls.
Without it, the same information is buried in an annual report that runs about 100 pages, most of it written for accountants.
This guide covers four things:
- The three financial statements, in one sentence each.
- The metrics Briefs Terminal puts front and center, and what each one tells you.
- A walk through one real company, top to bottom.
- How to use the competitive analysis and the four tabs under it.
If you'd rather learn this with a real company on screen, you can join Briefs Pro here.
The Three Statements, One Sentence Each
Every public company files three statements.
- The income statement shows how much the company sold and how much it kept over a stretch of time.
- The balance sheet shows what the company owns and what it owes on one specific day.
- The cash flow statement shows where real cash came from and where it went.
Each one can hide something the others show.
A company can post a profit on the income statement while cash drains out the back door. Only the cash flow statement will tell you.
The SEC has its own beginner's guide to the three statements if you want the longer version.
The Numbers Briefs Terminal Puts Front and Center
Pull up any company on Briefs Terminal. The stock price and the EPS, or earnings per share, are up at the top.
Scroll down a little and you get into the financial metrics. These are the common numbers people use to judge a company.
| Metric | What it is | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| P/E, price to earnings ratio | The dollars you pay for each dollar of yearly profit | Is the market already pricing in perfection? |
| P/S, price to sales ratio | The dollars you pay for each dollar of sales | Useful when profits are thin or new |
| Market capitalization | The total value of all the company's shares | Is this a giant, a mid-size company, or a small one? |
| Dividend yield | The cash payout as a percent of the share price | If you want income, is there any? |
| Operating revenue | How much the company sold, as of the latest report | Is the business big, and is that number rising? |
| 52-week range | The high and low price over the past year | Is the stock near the top or bottom of its range? |
| ROE, return on equity | The profit the company earns on the money its owners put in | Is that money turning into profit? |
| Year-over-year revenue growth | How much sales grew versus the same period last year | Is the business getting bigger or smaller? |
Need a refresher? You can always highlight the little icon right next to it for a quick note on what it is.
Return on equity tells you how hard the company works with its owners' money. Revenue growth tells you if the story is still moving.
Walking Through One Real Company
Here's Nvidia, top to bottom. Every one of these numbers changes each quarter, so treat this as a snapshot from when we pulled it up.
Price and EPS. Up at the top you see what the stock costs today and how much profit it earns per share. Together, those two make the P/E ratio one scroll down.
Revenue growth. Nvidia's revenue more than doubled in a single year, and the revenue growth metric is where that shows up.
Dividend yield. When we pulled it up, Nvidia's dividend yield was 0.23%. It doesn't pay you very much at all.
P/E and P/S. A fast-growing company usually carries a high price for each dollar of profit and sales. Investors are paying today for the growth they expect tomorrow.
52-week range. Nvidia's one-month chart shows highs and lows every month. The 52-week range shows where today's price sits inside a year of those swings.
Read together: huge growth, a high price on that growth, and almost no cash payout. That's a growth investor's stock, not an income investor's.
If you want to go deeper on any of these, that's what our Zero to Pro course is built for.
The Peer Comparison and the Four Tabs
Scroll down a little further and you'll find the competitive analysis. It keeps your company on the left-hand side and shows its numbers next to other major companies in the same industry.
You don't have to choose any of those companies. Briefs Terminal fills it in for you, and it's the fastest way to find out if a number is impressive or just average for the industry.
That's one of four tabs in this section:
- Competitive analysis. Your company on the left, its peers on the right, the same metrics all the way across.
- News. An aggregate of the latest news for whatever company you're looking up.
- Financial statements. The income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. These are pulled from a source at the SEC, so they're always up to date with whatever the company has filed.
- Transcripts. Transcripts from earnings calls and other major events where the company has spoken. For Nvidia, that means its latest earnings call, plus events hosted by Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.
Everything on the page, from the price and EPS down through the transcripts, is a common yardstick for judging a company.
Putting the Page Together
Each part of the page answers a different question, and they work best together. Start with the metrics up top, and when one looks odd, use the tabs below to find out why:
- Revenue jumped 40%? Open the statements tab and see if costs jumped 40% too.
- The P/E looks sky-high? Open the peer comparison and see if every company in the industry looks the same.
- The dividend yield dropped? Open the news tab, then the latest earnings call transcript, and find out why.
Read a balance sheet to answer one question, not front to back.
How to Read a Company in 10 Minutes: 6 Steps
- Search the company on Briefs Terminal. Start with one you already know so you have a feel for the answers.
- Read the price and EPS at the top. Then scroll to the financial metrics and read them left to right.
- Hover the icon next to anything you don't recognize.
- Circle the one that surprises you. Slow growth at a "growth" company, or a tiny yield at a "safe" one.
- Check the peer comparison. A number means nothing until you see what the rest of the industry looks like.
- Open the statements or transcripts tab to answer that one question. Then write one sentence: "This is a ___ company with ___ growth and ___ risk."
Pros and Cons of Reading Numbers This Way
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| The important numbers sit on one screen, in order | You'll miss detail that lives in the footnotes |
| Statements come straight from SEC filings, so they're current | Filings tell you what happened, not what's next |
| The peer comparison gives every number context | Industry peers aren't always perfect matches |
| Transcripts let you hear the company in its own words | Every CEO sounds confident on a call |
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to read the whole annual report? No. Start with the metrics at the top of the page. Open the financial statements tab only when one of them raises a question.
Where do the numbers on Briefs Terminal come from? The statements are pulled from a source at the SEC, so they match the company's latest filing. If a field shows "unavailable," the data wasn't reported. That's a gap, not a zero.
What's the difference between the income statement and the cash flow statement? The income statement counts sales the company hasn't been paid for yet. The cash flow statement counts the money that landed in the bank after the bills were paid.
The Takeaway
Read the price and EPS, scroll the metrics, check the peers, and open a tab only when something surprises you.
Briefs Terminal puts all of it in one place, so the 100-page report becomes a ten-minute habit.
Pair the Numbers With the Briefs Score
The numbers on Briefs Terminal show you what a company has done. The Briefs Score shows you how that adds up for your goal.
With Briefs Investor you study thousands of stocks with the click of a button because you get access to two powerful tools:
- Briefs Score
- Briefs Connector, aka, Supercharge Your AI
The Briefs Score grades thousands of publicly traded stocks from A to F, with a separate grade for growth, income, and wealth preservation investors. Nvidia's huge revenue growth and 0.23% yield, for example, added up to an A- in growth and a D- in income.
*Note - scores are updated and are subject to change.
You can also supercharge your favorite AI like ChatGPT or Claude with our Briefs Score and stock data, so it answers with real financial data instead of what's popular on the internet.
Want to learn more about Briefs Investor? You can see all it has to offer here.
