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Earnings Call Brief for Reporters
Send the transcript and the release, and get the guidance change measured, the non-GAAP gap sized, and every analyst question that went unanswered.
River reads the transcript against the release and against the guidance the company gave last time, and does the three comparisons the documents leave to you. Where the new guidance range sits relative to the old one, measured at the midpoint and at both ends. How much of every adjusted figure is created by the adjustments. And which analyst asked for a number, and whether a number came back. Then you get a brief you can file from, with the metric table beside it.
Most tools ranking for this search are summarizers. Paste the transcript, receive bullet points: revenue was this, the chief executive said that, the outlook is cautious. The bullets are accurate and they are all restatement, because a summary of a call reports what was said and a business story reports what changed. Both of those live in the difference between two documents, and a tool that only ever holds one of them cannot find either.
Built for business reporters filing the same afternoon, and for anyone who has to turn a 75-minute call into 800 words before the market closes. Run it as soon as the transcript is out. When the numbers are contested, fact reconciliation sorts what the record can carry. Interview transcript workup handles the follow-up call with the finance chief, and the fact check pack ties each figure in the draft to its document.
A company can narrow its guidance and cut it at the same time
Take Norwood Fleet Systems, an invented company on an invented Q3 call, built to a real shape. Full-year revenue guidance last quarter was 1.42 to 1.48 billion dollars. On this call it became 1.38 to 1.44 billion. The range is 60 million wide both times, so nothing about it looks narrower or wider, and the phrase used on the call was that guidance had been refined. The midpoint moved from 1.450 billion to 1.410 billion, which is 40 million and 2.8 percent down.
The sharper fact is at the top. The new best case of 1.44 billion sits below the old midpoint of 1.450 billion, so the most optimistic outcome the company now describes is worse than the outcome it called most likely three months ago. That is a cut, and no sentence on the call says so. It only appears when you put the two ranges side by side, which is arithmetic across two documents rather than a reading of either.
The same move works on the adjusted numbers. The quarter reported revenue of 342.1 million against 318.6 million a year earlier, up 7.4 percent, and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.2 percent against 21.4 percent, down 3.2 points. Adjusted earnings came in at 47 cents a share against 11 cents reported, a 36 cent gap, so 77 percent of the headline profit figure is created by the adjustments. Seven non-GAAP measures appear in the release and five carry a reconciliation.
How it works
Send the call
Attach or paste the transcript and the release, plus last quarter's release if you have it.
Get the comparison
Guidance measured against the prior range, and every metric set beside its prior period.
Read the questions
Each analyst question with what was asked for and whether a number actually came back.
Work it in chat
Ask for the brief at your length, a different lede, or the questions to put to the company.
What you get
- The new guidance range against the old one, compared at the midpoint and at both ends
- Every non-GAAP measure with its reconciliation, and the ones presented without one
- The share of each adjusted figure that the adjustments themselves created, as a number
- Every analyst question, what was asked for, and whether that specific thing came back
- Where a metric definition changed between periods, which breaks the comparison silently
- A brief with usable quotes, each tied to its speaker in the transcript, plus a metric sheet
- The follow-up questions worth putting to the company before anything gets filed
Common questions
How is this different from a transcript summarizer?
A summarizer holds one document and reports what it says. This holds three: the transcript, the release, and the guidance given last quarter. Every finding worth a headline lives in the difference between them, which is why a correct summary of a call can still miss that the outlook was cut.
What is the point of comparing both ends of a guidance range?
Because a midpoint move understates what happened when the range shifts wholesale. In the worked example the new top end of 1.44 billion is below the old midpoint of 1.450 billion, so the best case has become worse than the previous base case. Nobody on the call says that sentence.
Why does the non-GAAP gap matter so much?
Because the adjusted figure is the one that gets quoted. Under Regulation G a company presenting a non-GAAP measure must show the most directly comparable GAAP measure and a quantitative reconciliation. Sizing the gap tells you how much of the headline number the adjustments built.
The reconciliation was not in the release. Is that a violation?
Not necessarily. Under Regulation G, for a measure given orally or by webcast, the requirement is met if the reconciliation is on the company's website when the figure is given and the call says where. So the practical step is to check the investor page rather than assume the release is complete.
How do you decide a question was dodged?
Mechanically, not editorially. The question asked for a specific thing, and the answer either contained that thing or did not. In the worked call, 14 analyst questions produced 9 direct answers, 3 qualitative answers where a figure was requested, and 2 with no response, so 5 asked for a number and got none.
Does what executives say on the call carry any obligation?
The disclosure framework matters here. Regulation FD says that when a company gives material nonpublic information to analysts, investment firms or shareholders likely to trade on it, it must make that information public: at the same time if the disclosure is intentional, promptly if not. A number refused on the call cannot properly go privately to one analyst afterwards.
Can it handle a company whose definitions keep moving?
That case gets flagged rather than smoothed over. Where a metric's definition changed between the periods being compared, the pass says so and rebuilds the comparison where the disclosure allows. If it does not allow it, the finding is that the year-over-year figure is not comparable, which is itself reportable.
Built by
Chandler Supple
Co-founder & CEO, River
Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.
Earnings Call Brief for Reporters
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