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 , limited to records and filtered by period .

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.