The Deep Dive, Days 1–2

Learning objectives

By the end of these two days you can:

1. Read 5–10 years of a company's reports oldest-to-newest and run the management-credibility "time-travel" test, extracting a scored track record of promises made versus results delivered, before you know how the story turned out.
2. Build a ten-year spreadsheet history from primary filings using the standard row template (segment revenue, the margin stack, ROIC/ROCE, invested capital, CFO, capex, FCF, net debt, share count, dividends + buybacks), and apply the required normalizations (the Ind AS 116 lease break, the FY20 India tax-rate break, exceptionals, re-segmentation, and acquisitions) so the series is comparable end to end.
3. Compute incremental ROIC (ΔNOPAT ÷ Δinvested capital) over multi-year windows, reconcile it to growth via g = RR × ROIC, handle a mid-window acquisition, and read it as the compounder test that headline ROIC hides.
4. Read every major note (revenue recognition, related-party, leases, contingencies, segments, ESOP) and state precisely what an analyst extracts from each and which red flag each can hide.
5. Map an industry with Mauboussin's supplier→firm→customer chain, locate the profit pool link by link, and run Greenwald's market-share-stability test on a real share table against the ~2%/yr threshold, cross-checked against incumbent returns.
6. Benchmark a company against 2–3 peers on identical, normalized KPIs and read the comparison as a story, not a scoreboard.
7. Build a 3-statement-lite model driven by three-to-five assumptions and generate internally-consistent base/bull/bear cases: fewer rows than M3.08's full build, the same discipline.
8. Run a reverse DCF to extract the growth, duration, and required return the current price implies, translate the implied numbers into countable operational units, and judge, against base rates, whether the market's story is too optimistic or too pessimistic, ending with the single variant question to resolve on Day 3.

Prerequisites & connections

Builds on. This is a synthesis: it assumes almost the whole program and puts it on a stopwatch-adjacent workbench.

• M8.01 & M8.02: the source stack, fast filing navigation, and the twelve teardown questions. The deep dive is the teardown with the scaffolding removed and the numbers rebuilt by hand: teardown question 7 (the economics) becomes Day 1's spreadsheet; questions 5–6 (competition, moat) become Day 2's industry map and share table; question 11 (what's priced in) becomes Day 2's reverse DCF.
• M1.02–M1.10. You cannot build a history you cannot read; the notes-reading section (§4.7) is the M1.10 filing-anatomy skill aimed at extraction.
• M2.03 is the backbone. NOPAT, the operating/financing split of invested capital, headline ROIC, and incremental ROIC were built there by hand (the DMart worked example). The deep dive fills the "incremental-ROIC row for every company you ever study" that M2.03 promised you would. M2.04 (FCF), M2.05 (benchmarking discipline: time-series, cross-sectional, common-size, normalize-before-comparing) are used wholesale on Day 1 and in §4.11.
• M3.03 (WACC, the hurdle every ROIC and the reverse DCF is measured against: ~12% post-tax INR, ~8–9% USD as of mid-2026, verify), M3.04–M3.05 (FCFF forecasting, terminal value, and the reverse DCF; §4.13 is that machine run for real), M3.07 (capital allocation: the five uses of cash you read off the history), M3.08 (the full 3-statement model; §4.12's lite model is its faster cousin, same articulation, three drivers instead of thirty).
• M4.03 (Porter's five forces, the value chain, the profit pool) and M4.05 (Greenwald's share-stability test, Mauboussin's Measuring-the-Moat four-pass protocol, the CAP, and Damodaran's narrative-and-numbers). §4.8–§4.10 are those modules under a two-day clock, run on the carried company.

Feeds forward. M8.04 takes the same company (we carry Asian Paints) into Day 3: the variant question these two days produce is does dealer-and-painter captivity survive Birla Opus's ₹10,000-crore assault?, and that is exactly what Day 3's scuttlebutt (dealer channel checks), incentive reading (the promoter families' alignment), earnings-call time-series, and steelmanned bear are built to resolve. M8.05 certifies the two days under time pressure. Phase 10's two capstone deep dives (M10.01 US, M10.02 India) are the same two days run unaided. Competencies C3 (understand a business model cold), C5 (value three ways; the reverse DCF is the third way), and C10 (the signature skill) all route through here.