Teardown

A rapid, structured pass over a company that produces an opinion in one to two hours rather than a conclusion in three days.

It applies a fixed sequence of questions in the same order every time, so that nothing is skipped and the time is bounded. It ends with a short written output and one question to carry away, and its purpose is triage: deciding whether the company deserves the deeper work.

A teardown gives you an opinion. It doesn't give you conviction, and treating the two as equivalent is how positions get sized wrongly.

Do many, because the pattern recognition is the point.

Two hours buys an opinion. Conviction takes longer.

Holding to the time bound depends on the fixed sequence. Read the auditor's report, then the five-year revenue, margin and return series, then the cash flow conversion, then the balance sheet for leverage and working capital, then the shareholding pattern, then one competitor for context. Stop at two hours whatever state the work is in and write the short output. Then record the one question you'd want answered next. That question is the whole value of the exercise, because it decides whether the company earns three more days.