Let's begin with the thing that makes us unusual. Most stock research builds towards a verdict - “buy”, “sell”, a price the share is supposedly heading for. Ours never does, and that is a deliberate choice, not an oversight.

Our job is to make a company understandable: what it does, how it is really performing, and the honest case both for and against it. What you decide to do with that understanding is yours to work out, not ours to dictate. You'll sometimes hear this called an observer voice - we describe and explain, rather than cheer a company on or warn you away from it.

And one important point, in plain terms: we are a research and education service, not financial advisers. We are not authorised by the FCA in the UK or the SEC in the US, and nothing you read here is personal advice or a recommendation. When a decision matters to you, the thinking has to be your own - our part is simply to make sure you have the full picture to think with.

Two things sit right at the top of every note, so let's take them one at a time.

First, the number strip. These are the few figures that matter most this quarter. Each one shows its value and how it has changed against the same quarter a year ago - that is what YoY, “year on year”, means. We compare with a year ago rather than with last quarter because it irons out the seasonal ups and downs that every business has.

Second, AT A GLANCE. This is a single short paragraph, and it always carries the win and the catch in the same breath. We will never hand you the good headline without the thing that complicates it. In the example above, a record result sits right beside the fact that the company's own forecast assumes no sales to China at all. Notice what that does: the point you walk away with isn't “great quarter” - it is the tension between the two.

Older research had a habit of burying the one line you needed in the middle of a long paragraph. We have turned that around: the line you need is always on top, and everything else is folded away under “expand”.

So how should you use it? If a company is new to you, open the expanders - that is the full explanation, written with you in mind. If you already know the company, skim the top lines and move on in seconds. Nothing is hidden from you, and nothing is dumbed down; it is simply folded so the page isn't a wall of text.

The quieter background sections - the business model, the competition, the technology, the company's long-term advantages - all behave in just the same way. They don't change much from one quarter to the next, so they stay tucked away until you ask for them.

Here is a small thing worth noticing: this guide works in exactly the same way. The card you are reading opened because you tapped “How to read this”. That is the whole idea in miniature - you are in control of how deep you go.

You should never have to leave a note to understand it. Let's go through the three ways you can dig in, because together they mean nothing is ever left unexplained.

The metric cards. The key numbers are cards you can flip over. The front shows the figure; flip it and you'll find why it matters, along with a “Next print” number - what analysts expect next quarter. We include that last figure for a reason: it lets you mark the result yourself when it arrives, which turns the note from a one-off report into a scorecard you keep.

The two-level sidebar cards. The sidebar holds the company's fundamentals - its price and market data, the quarter's figures, the guidance, the revenue mix, the cash flow and the balance sheet. Open a card once for the data, then open it again under “what this is & why it moves” for a plain-English explanation of what that data actually tells you. As deep as you'd like to go, and no deeper.

The dotted words. Any term carrying a dotted underline will show a one-line definition the moment you hover over it or tap it. And if you'd like the fuller list, a glossary sits at the foot of every note for the key terms.

The table sets this quarter beside the same quarter a year ago, with the change between them in the final column. So reading across a row tells you not only where a figure stands, but which way it is moving and by how much.

You'll notice that many lines come in two versions, marked GAAP and non-GAAP, and it's worth understanding the difference. GAAP is the standardised, by-the-rulebook accounting figure. Non-GAAP is the company's own adjusted version, which strips out certain one-off items - and it's usually the number a company points to when it talks about its own performance. We show both, so you can see the official figure and the adjusted one side by side and judge the gap for yourself.

Below the profit lines you'll usually find the cash figures, such as free cash flow - the actual cash the business generated, which isn't the same thing as accounting profit. We'll come back to why that matters in the last card, on trust.

Let's take the four in turn, because each one answers a different question about the company.

Business model & segments - how the company actually makes its money, and which parts of the business bring in what. If a company is new to you, this is the place to start.

Competitive landscape - who it is up against, and where the real pressure comes from. Quite often the most telling threat isn't the obvious rival.

Technology & strategy - what the company is building, and where it is heading next.

Economic moat - the lasting advantages meant to keep competitors at bay. A “moat”, borrowed from the castle, is simply a way of picturing what protects a business over the long term.

Here is the reading tip. These four don't change much from quarter to quarter, so you don't need to re-read them every time. Open them in full the first time you meet a company; once you know it well, you can skim straight past.

This is the section that does the real work, so let's take our time with it. There are four things to recognise.

Start with the crux. A single line at the top frames the live question - the one thing the whole argument turns on. Read that before anything else.

Next, the theme tags. Each point is labelled by type - Demand, Margin, Policy, Cash, Valuation - so you can see at a glance what kind of argument you are looking at.

Then the evidence grades, which is the part most research quietly leaves out. Every point carries a small grade telling you how solid it is, so you know how much weight to rest on it:

And finally the mirror, which is the most important idea on this whole page. The very same fact is often the case for and the case against at once - it simply depends on the price.

This bar plots a single thing: where the price is now, set against two reference points - the range it has traded in over the past year, and the range of price targets that professional analysts have published.

It is not a prediction, and we never add a target of our own. The reason is the very one we met in the first card: the conclusion is yours.

Now for the idea that is really worth grasping - why the spread matters. Look at how far apart those analyst targets are: $180 at the low end, $500 at the high. That enormous gap isn't a verdict. It is disagreement.

The purpose of this section is to make a note useful long after you've read it - something you come back to when the news breaks.

Notice first that events are ordered by importance, not simply by date. We rank them by how soon they are and how big their effect could be, taken together. That is why a large, ongoing risk can sit above a sooner but smaller event - the order itself is telling you where to look first.

Each event then carries two quick markers: a HIGH, MED or LOW label for how much it could move things, and a counter for the timing, such as “~11 weeks”.

But the most useful part is the “Watch:” line, because it names the exact figure to check on the day. So when those August results land, you'll already know to compare revenue against the $91.0 billion forecast - rather than scrambling to work out what mattered after the event.

Companies are, by their nature, optimistic about themselves. This section is built so you can read that optimism carefully, and it always follows the same three steps.

First, the ambition - what management says it is reaching for, in its own words.

Second, in real terms - what that ambition would actually require, put into numbers. Where we have worked a figure out ourselves rather than taken it from the company, we label it clearly as derived: illustrative, not a forecast. We never dress our own arithmetic up as a prediction.

Third, what stands in the way - the genuine obstacles to it all coming true.

Reading a forward story in this order - ambition, then reality, then obstacle - is exactly what keeps you from being swept along by a good pitch.

Three different kinds of number appear in a note, and we mark each one so that you are never in doubt about what you are leaning on.

Verified figures come straight from the company's official filings. For a US company, those are the forms it files with the regulator, the SEC - the 8-K is the one that carries the earnings release. We read that original source before we write a single figure down. These are your firm ground.

Derived figures are ones we have calculated ourselves - turning a single quarter into a yearly run-rate, for instance. We always label these as illustrative. They are there to help you picture the scale of something; they are never presented as fact, and never as a forecast.

Attributed and dated figures are the market data - share prices, analyst targets - which come from outside providers and change by the day. So we name the source and give the date. A price quoted in a note is a moment in time, not a live reading.