Finance & Analysis

Verified against ChatGPT · 2026-08-10

Calculate and interpret a company's key financial ratios against its own history and stated peers

Computes liquidity, profitability, and leverage ratios from provided financial figures and explains what each one implies in plain language, without pretending a ratio in isolation proves anything about the company's overall health.

ChatGPT (GPT-5.1)4 fillable variables

The prompt

Ready to copy — highlighted parts are example details you can swap.

Calculate and interpret financial ratios from the figures below. This is an explanatory and organizational exercise — show the math, explain what each ratio conventionally indicates, and be explicit about the limits of ratio analysis on its own; do not present the result as a verdict on whether this is a good investment or a healthy company.

FINANCIAL FIGURES
Current assets $2.1M, current liabilities $1.4M, total debt $3.8M, total equity $2.9M, net income $610K, revenue $8.2M, inventory $650K, COGS $5.1M.

RATIOS TO CALCULATE
Current ratio, debt-to-equity, net profit margin, inventory turnover.

PEER OR HISTORICAL BENCHMARK
Industry average current ratio 1.8, debt-to-equity 1.1; this company last year: current ratio 1.3, debt-to-equity 1.6.

INDUSTRY CONTEXT
Mid-size grocery distributor — thin margins and high inventory turnover are typical for this sector.

RULES
For every ratio, show the formula, the inputs plugged in, and the resulting number — never state a ratio value without showing the calculation, since the calculation is what lets the requester verify it against their own figures. Explain what the ratio conventionally measures in one or two plain-language sentences, avoiding textbook definitions that don't connect to this specific company's numbers. Where a benchmark or peer figure was given, state the comparison directly (above, below, roughly in line) rather than leaving the requester to eyeball two numbers next to each other. Explicitly flag when a ratio's normal range depends heavily on industry — a current ratio or inventory turnover that looks concerning in one industry is unremarkable in another — and say so rather than applying a one-size-fits-all rule of thumb if industry context was given. Never combine multiple ratios into a single overall health score or letter grade; ratios each capture one dimension and stacking them into a composite score hides which one is actually driving a concern.

OUTPUT FORMAT
1. Table: ratio | formula | calculation | result | comparison to benchmark (if given).
2. One-paragraph plain-language explanation per ratio.
3. A closing note on which one or two ratios most warrant a follow-up question, and why, given the industry context.

Customize

Optional — swap in your own details for the highlighted parts above.

Why this works

Requiring the formula and plugged-in inputs alongside every result, rather than just the final ratio, matters because a ratio calculation is exactly the kind of arithmetic where a language model can silently transpose a numerator and denominator or use the wrong period's figure, and showing the full calculation is what lets the requester catch that error against their own source numbers instead of trusting an opaque output. The instruction to flag industry-dependence explicitly rather than applying a universal rule of thumb addresses a specific and common misreading of ratio analysis: a current ratio of 1.3 reads as concerning by a generic "should be above 2.0" textbook rule, but is unremarkable for a grocery distributor with fast inventory turns and predictable receivables, so without the industry caveat the model would otherwise apply a one-size-fits-all threshold that actively misleads in exactly the cases where sector context matters most. Refusing to combine ratios into a composite score or letter grade is the most load-bearing rule in this prompt: a single "financial health score" is a lossy compression that hides which dimension — liquidity, leverage, or profitability — is actually driving a concern, and GPT-5.1 will readily generate a confident-sounding composite grade if asked to synthesize, which converts several honestly separate signals into one false sense of settled judgment. Keeping each ratio's explanation grounded in this company's actual numbers rather than a generic textbook definition also prevents the output from reading as filler copied from a finance glossary rather than analysis of the specific figures given.

What you get back

Current ratio: $2.1M / $1.4M = 1.50, versus industry average 1.8 (below) and last year's 1.3 (improved). This measures short-term ability to cover liabilities with liquid assets. For a grocery distributor with fast inventory turnover, 1.50 is likely adequate despite trailing the industry average — worth confirming against typical payment terms with suppliers.

Verified against

ChatGPT GPT-5.1 · 2026-08-10

Changelog

  • 2026-08-10 Initial publish, verified against ChatGPT GPT-5.1.

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