How we work
Five rules. Not marketing copy — every piece of content has to pass all five.
Single quarter only, never the cumulative figure
Hikvision reported 49.63% gross margin for the nine months — only 0.34pp below the half-year number, which reads as stable. Split by quarter: Q3 was 49.05% against Q2's 50.67%, a drop of 1.62pp. One quarter, two methods, opposite conclusions. We always split. Cumulative figures flatten the change, and the closer to year-end, the worse it gets.
Every figure traces back to a document
Every number in an answer must come with the filing, the statement and the period it came from. If we cannot trace it, we delete it rather than write "approximately" or "estimated". That is why every post ends with a Sources line naming the company, the document, the date and the filing ID.
Every claim must be falsifiable
"Margin fell because the cheap inventory ran out" is not enough. We also state what would prove it wrong — e.g. "if margin recovers above X next quarter, this explanation fails." A call you cannot mark right or wrong three months later is not a call, it is description.
Topics are chosen by where the accounting basis breaks, not by what went up
Everyone writes about today's limit-ups; nobody needs another version of that. We look for the other kind of question: where the cumulative basis and the quarterly basis point in opposite directions. That is where a reader using the default view gets it wrong, and it is the only thing worth writing.
Accounting bases are never mixed
Quarterly with cumulative, attributable with non-recurring, GAAP with non-GAAP — never mixed. Comparing guidance growth to the quarter just reported, or a non-GAAP consensus to a GAAP actual, are the two mistakes we have made. They are listed here because they are easy to make.