Financial Metrics Analysis

Retrieve and analyze year-over-year growth in key income statement items for public companies using the Octagon MCP server.

Prerequisites

Ensure Octagon MCP is configured in your AI agent (Cursor, Claude Desktop, Windsurf, etc.). See references/mcp-setup.md for installation instructions.

Workflow

1. Identify Analysis Parameters

Determine the following before querying:

Ticker: Stock symbol (e.g., AAPL, MSFT, GOOGL)
Records: Number of periods to retrieve (e.g., 5 years)
Period: FY (fiscal year) or Q (quarterly)

2. Execute Query via Octagon MCP

Use the octagon-agent tool with a natural language prompt:

Retrieve year-over-year growth in key income-statement items for <TICKER>, limited to <N> records and filtered by period <FY|Q>.

MCP Call Format:

{
  "server": "octagon-mcp",
  "toolName": "octagon-agent",
  "arguments": {
    "prompt": "Retrieve year-over-year growth in key income-statement items for AAPL, limited to 5 records and filtered by period FY"
  }
}

3. Expected Output

The agent returns a tabular response with YoY growth percentages:

Year	Revenue Growth	Cost of Revenue Growth	Gross Profit Growth	Operating Income Growth	Net Income Growth
2024	2.0%	1.5%	3.1%	5.2%	4.8%
2023	-2.8%	-1.2%	-4.5%	-8.1%	-10.2%
...	...	...	...	...	...

Data Sources: octagon-companies-agent, octagon-financials-agent

4. Interpret Results

See references/interpreting-results.md for guidance on:

Reading growth percentages
Identifying trends and inflection points
Spotting operating leverage signals
Comparing to industry benchmarks

Example Queries

Basic YoY Analysis:

Retrieve year-over-year growth in key income-statement items for AAPL, limited to 5 records and filtered by period FY.

Quarterly Analysis:

Retrieve year-over-year growth in key income-statement items for TSLA, limited to 8 records and filtered by period Q.

Extended Historical View:

Retrieve year-over-year growth in key income-statement items for MSFT, limited to 10 records and filtered by period FY.

Key Metrics Explained

Metric	Definition
Revenue Growth	YoY change in total revenue/sales
Cost of Revenue Growth	YoY change in direct costs (COGS)
Gross Profit Growth	YoY change in Revenue minus COGS
Operating Income Growth	YoY change in income from operations
Net Income Growth	YoY change in bottom-line profit

Analysis Tips

Revenue vs Net Income divergence: If Net Income grows faster than Revenue, the company is improving margins or reducing costs.
Operating leverage: When Operating Income grows faster than Revenue, fixed costs are being spread over more sales.
Margin compression: If Cost of Revenue grows faster than Revenue, margins are declining.
Consistency: Look for companies with consistent positive growth across all metrics.
Trend reversals: A switch from negative to positive growth often signals a turnaround.