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{
"name": "capital-allocation",
"description": "Deep dive into capital deployment, buybacks, dividends, and shareholder yield",
"included_files": [
{
"relative_path": "agents/openai.yaml",
"size_in_bytes": 266
}
],
"skill_md_contents": "---\nname: capital-allocation\ndescription: Deep dive into capital deployment, buybacks, dividends, and shareholder\n yield\n---\n\nPerform a deep dive into capital allocation for the company named in the user's request. If no ticker or company is provided, ask for one before proceeding.\n\n**Before starting, read `../data-access.md` for data access methods and `../design-system.md` for formatting conventions.** Follow the data access detection logic and design system throughout this skill.\n\nFollow these steps:\n\n## 1. Company Lookup\nLook up the company by ticker using `discover_companies`. Capture:\n- `company_id`\n- `latest_calendar_quarter` — anchor for all period calculations below (see `../data-access.md` Section 1.5)\n- `latest_fiscal_quarter`\n- Firm name for report attribution (default: \"Daloopa\") — see `../data-access.md` Section 4.5\n\n## 2. Market Data\nGet the current stock price, market cap, and shares outstanding for {TICKER} (see `../data-access.md` Section 2 for how to source market data in your environment).\n- This is needed to compute yields and per-share metrics\n\nIf market data is unavailable, note that market-derived metrics (yields, etc.) cannot be computed and proceed with Daloopa data only.\n\n## 3. Capital Allocation Data\nCalculate 8 quarters backward from `latest_calendar_quarter`. Pull:\n\n**Share Count & Buybacks:**\n- Diluted shares outstanding\n- Share repurchase amounts (dollars)\n- Shares retired/repurchased (units, if available)\n\n**Dividends:**\n- Dividends per share\n- Total dividend payments\n- Special dividends (if any)\n\n**Cash Flow:**\n- Operating Cash Flow\n- Capital Expenditures\n- Free Cash Flow (compute as OCF - CapEx, label \"(calc.)\")\n- D&A (for reference)\n\n**Balance Sheet:**\n- Cash and equivalents\n- Short-term investments / marketable securities\n- Total debt (short + long term)\n- Net debt (compute as Total Debt - Cash - Investments, label \"(calc.)\")\n\n**M&A / Investments:**\n- Search for \"acquisition\", \"purchase of business\", \"investment\" in series\n- Pull any available M&A-related series\n\n## 4. Compute Capital Allocation Metrics\nCalculate for each quarter where data is available:\n\n**Shareholder Returns:**\n- Total Buyback Amount\n- Total Dividend Amount\n- Total Shareholder Return = Buybacks + Dividends\n- Shareholder Yield = (Buybacks + Dividends) / Market Cap (annualized)\n- Buyback Yield = Buybacks / Market Cap (annualized)\n- Dividend Yield = Dividends / Market Cap (annualized)\n\n**FCF Deployment:**\n- FCF Payout Ratio = Total Shareholder Return / FCF\n- CapEx as % of Revenue\n- CapEx as % of OCF\n- FCF Margin = FCF / Revenue\n\n**Leverage:**\n- Net Debt / EBITDA (if EBITDA available; compute from Operating Income + D&A if needed)\n- Net Debt / Equity\n- Interest Coverage = Operating Income / Interest Expense (if available)\n- Cash as % of Market Cap\n\n**Share Count Dynamics:**\n- QoQ share count change\n- YoY share count change\n- Implied buyback rate (QoQ % reduction)\n- At current buyback rate, years to retire X% of shares\n\n## 5. Qualitative Research\nSearch SEC filings for capital allocation strategy and context. Try multiple searches:\n- **Buyback program**: Try \"repurchase program\", \"share repurchase\"; fallback to \"buyback\", \"authorization\"\n- **Dividend policy**: Try \"dividend\", \"capital return\"; fallback to \"distribution\", \"payout\"\n- **M&A strategy**: Try \"acquisition\", \"strategic\"; fallback to \"purchase\", \"investment\"\n- **Capital priorities**: Try \"capital allocation\", \"priorities\"; fallback to \"deploy\", \"balance sheet\"\n- **Debt management**: Try \"debt\", \"refinance\"; fallback to \"leverage\", \"maturity\"\n\nExtract:\n- Board-authorized buyback programs (remaining authorization amount)\n- Dividend policy (commitment to growth, payout ratio targets)\n- M&A philosophy (bolt-on vs transformational, deal pipeline commentary)\n- Management's stated capital allocation framework and priorities\n- Any changes in capital allocation strategy\n- Direct quotes with document citations\n\n## 6. Historical Analysis & Value Judgment\nAnalyze the 8-quarter trend:\n- Is buyback activity accelerating or decelerating?\n- Is the company buying back more shares when price is lower (disciplined) or higher (less disciplined)?\n- Dividend growth rate (if applicable)\n- Shift between CapEx, buybacks, dividends, and debt repayment over time\n- FCF conversion trend (is more/less of OCF converting to FCF?)\n\n**Honestly assess whether capital allocation is creating or destroying value:**\n- If the company is buying back stock at all-time-high prices with deteriorating fundamentals, call it value destruction — even if EPS looks better from the lower share count.\n- If the company is under-investing in CapEx or R&D to fund buybacks, flag the risk to long-term competitiveness.\n- If FCF payout ratio exceeds 100%, the company is funding returns with debt or cash drawdowns — flag this as unsustainable.\n- Compare the implied return from buybacks (inverse of P/E at purchase prices) to what the company could earn from organic reinvestment or M&A.\n\n## 6.5. Reinvestment Assessment\n\nAssess whether the company is adequately reinvesting in its business or funding returns at the expense of long-term competitiveness.\n\n**Pull reinvestment metrics (8 quarters):**\n- R&D expense (and R&D as % of revenue)\n- Capital Expenditures (and CapEx as % of revenue)\n- Key growth KPIs relevant to the business model (use sector taxonomy):\n - **SaaS/Cloud**: ARR, net revenue retention, RPO/cRPO, customers >$100K\n - **Consumer Tech**: DAU/MAU, ARPU, installed base, paid subscribers\n - **E-commerce/Marketplace**: GMV, take rate, active buyers/sellers\n - **Retail**: same-store sales, store count, average ticket\n - **Telecom/Media**: subscribers, churn, ARPU, content spend\n - **Hardware**: units shipped, ASP, attach rate\n - **Financial Services**: AUM, NIM, loan growth, fee income ratio\n - **Pharma/Biotech**: pipeline stage, patient starts, scripts, market share\n - **Industrials/Energy**: backlog, book-to-bill, utilization, production volumes\n\n**Assess reinvestment adequacy:**\n- Is R&D/revenue trending down while buybacks are increasing? This may indicate the company is funding shareholder returns by underinvesting in innovation.\n- Is CapEx/revenue declining while the business requires sustained infrastructure investment (e.g., cloud, manufacturing, stores)?\n- Are growth KPIs (subscriber adds, customer growth, same-store sales) deteriorating while capital returns are at record levels? This is a red flag — the company may be harvesting rather than growing.\n- Compare R&D intensity and CapEx intensity vs peers (if available from the industry or comps skills). Is the company investing more or less than competitors?\n\n**Value creation vs extraction verdict:**\n- Net assessment: Is the company's capital allocation creating long-term value (reinvesting at high ROIC, buying back cheap stock, growing dividends sustainably) or extracting value (under-investing to fund buybacks at premium valuations, leveraging up for returns)?\n\n## 7. Save Report\nSave to `reports/{TICKER}_capital_allocation.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.\n\nStructure the report with these sections:\n\n```\n<h1>{Company Name} ({TICKER}) — Capital Allocation Analysis</h1>\n<p>Generated: {date}</p>\n\n<h2>Summary</h2>\n{2-3 sentences: How does this company deploy its capital? Key takeaways.}\n\n<h2>Current Snapshot</h2>\n<table>\n| Metric | Value |\n| Market Cap | $XXX |\n| Trailing 4Q FCF | $XXX |\n| FCF Yield | X.X% |\n| Shareholder Yield | X.X% |\n| Net Debt / EBITDA | X.Xx |\n| Remaining Buyback Authorization | $XXX |\n</table>\n\n<h2>Cash Flow & FCF (8 Quarters)</h2>\n<table>\n| Metric | Q1 | Q2 | ... | Q8 |\n{OCF, CapEx, FCF, FCF Margin % — with Daloopa citations}\n</table>\n\n<h2>Share Repurchases & Dividends (8 Quarters)</h2>\n<table>\n| Metric | Q1 | Q2 | ... | Q8 |\n{Buyback $, Dividends $, Total Return, Share Count — with Daloopa citations}\n</table>\n\n<h2>Shareholder Yield Analysis</h2>\n<table>\n| Metric | Q1 | Q2 | ... | Q8 |\n{Buyback Yield, Div Yield, Total Yield, FCF Payout Ratio}\n</table>\n\n<h2>Leverage & Balance Sheet (8 Quarters)</h2>\n<table>\n| Metric | Q1 | Q2 | ... | Q8 |\n{Cash, Debt, Net Debt, Net Debt/EBITDA — with Daloopa citations}\n</table>\n\n<h2>Capital Allocation Framework</h2>\n{Management's stated priorities from filings, with document citations}\n\n<h2>Reinvestment Assessment</h2>\n<table>\n| Metric | Q1 | Q2 | ... | Q8 |\n{R&D, R&D % Rev, CapEx, CapEx % Rev, key growth KPIs — with Daloopa citations}\n</table>\n{Analysis: Is the company adequately reinvesting? R&D/CapEx trends vs growth KPI trends. Value creation vs extraction verdict.}\n\n<h2>Buyback Discipline Analysis</h2>\n{Analysis of buyback timing vs price, share count reduction trend, authorization remaining}\n\n<h2>M&A Activity</h2>\n{Any acquisitions from filings, deal sizes, strategic rationale}\n\n<h2>Key Observations</h2>\n<ul>{3-5 bullet points on capital allocation quality, trends, and implications}</ul>\n```\n\nAll financial figures must use Daloopa citation format: `<a href=\"https://daloopa.com/src/{fundamental_id}\">$X.XX million</a>`\n\nTell the user where the HTML report was saved.\n\nHighlight the key capital allocation story (e.g., \"AAPL returned $XX billion to shareholders over the last year, a X.X% shareholder yield, with buybacks accelerating\").\n"
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