Guidance Tracker

7.5. Guidance Read-Throughs to Adjacent Companies

When a company raises, cuts, or materially changes its guidance, the implications often matter more for adjacent names than for the company itself. This section translates guidance signals into actionable read-throughs.

For each major guidance change identified in the tracker, analyze the implications for adjacent companies:

Identify who is affected by this company's guidance:

• Suppliers: Revenue/CapEx guidance changes directly affect supplier order books. A CapEx guidance raise is a near-term purchase order for equipment/component suppliers. A revenue guide-down signals softer demand flowing upstream.
• Customers: If this company supplies critical inputs, pricing or capacity guidance affects customer margins. Guiding for price increases = margin headwind for customers. Guiding for capacity expansion = supply relief.
• Competitors: Guidance on market growth, pricing environment, or demand trends is often the most honest signal about the competitive landscape. If Company A guides for share gains, that's a direct share loss for Company B.
• Channel partners / distributors: Volume guidance changes affect channel inventory and distributor revenue.

For each read-through (aim for 4-6), state:

1. The guidance data point — which metric changed, by how much, and in which quarter's call
2. The affected company (ticker + name)
3. The implication — bullish or bearish, with specific logic
4. Timing — is this a next-quarter impact or a multi-quarter trend?

Focus on the highest-signal guidance changes:

• Guidance raises after a period of conservatism → strong signal that the underlying business is inflecting
• Guidance cuts or "reaffirmed" when the market expected a raise → often more bearish than an explicit cut
• New metrics being guided on (or old metrics withdrawn) → management is redirecting attention, which itself is a signal
• Segment-level guidance changes → more specific read-throughs than consolidated figures
• KPI guidance (subscriber adds, unit volumes, ARPU) → often the most direct read-through to suppliers and competitors

Example:

• "NFLX raised Q2 subscriber guidance from +5M to +8M → Negative for DIS+, WBD: attention economy is zero-sum; NFLX's accelerating growth likely pressures competing streamers' subscriber adds. Positive for cloud/CDN names (AMZN/AWS, NET): more streaming = more infrastructure demand."
• "TSMC raised full-year CapEx guidance by $4B (from $32B to $36B) → Positive for ASML: TSMC is ASML's largest customer; incremental CapEx skews toward EUV tools. Positive for AMAT, LRCX, KLAC: broader equipment spend benefits all semicap names."

Web research for validation: Run 1 targeted search: "{TICKER} guidance change implications read through {year}" — analyst commentary on cross-company signals from guidance moves.

Source quality (MANDATORY): Follow ../data-access.md Section 2.5 — cite only primary sources (SEC filings, IR pages, press releases, transcripts) and Tier-1 financial press (Reuters, Bloomberg, WSJ, FT). Never use or cite Yahoo Finance editorial, Benzinga, Seeking Alpha, Motley Fool, Zacks, TipRanks, StockTwits, Reddit, or similar aggregators/blogs.

Present as a structured section in the report after the Pattern Analysis, grouped by guidance change (each major guide raise/cut gets its own sub-block with the read-throughs beneath it).

8. Save Report

Save to reports/{TICKER}_guidance_tracker.html using the HTML report template from ../design-system.md. Write the full analysis as styled HTML with the design system CSS inlined. This is the final deliverable — no intermediate markdown step needed.

The report should include:

• Summary header with company name, ticker, and period covered
• Quarter mapping reference table showing the +1 offset explicitly:

  | Guidance Source Quarter | Guidance Applies To | Actual Result Quarter |
  | CQ1 2024               | CQ2 2024            | CQ2 2024              |
  | CQ2 2024               | CQ3 2024            | CQ3 2024              |

  This makes the offset rule visible and auditable for every row in the tracker.
• Main tracker table with columns: Guidance Source, Metric, Guidance, Actual Period, Actual, Delta, Beat/Miss (with Daloopa citations on all values)
• Summary statistics (beat rate, avg beat/miss by metric)
• Pattern analysis narrative
• Guidance read-throughs to adjacent companies (grouped by guidance change, with affected tickers and implications)
• Key guidance quotes from filings with document citations

All financial figures must use Daloopa citation format: <a href="https://daloopa.com/src/{fundamental_id}">$X.XX million</a>

Tell the user where the HTML report was saved.

Highlight the key patterns (e.g., "Management has beat revenue guidance 7 of the last 8 quarters by an average of 2.3%"). Include an honest credibility verdict: Is management's guidance informative or performative? Should investors trust the forward guidance, and if not, what should they anchor to instead?