📂 TUESDAY – Single-Stock Deep Dive: “Unit Economics Truth Test”

Growth can make almost any business look good.

Unit economics tell you whether the growth is actually worth having.

A company can add customers, stores, loans, subscribers, vehicles, transactions, or locations while quietly destroying value if acquisition costs rise faster than lifetime profits.

Today’s Intel Drop strips one company down to its economic building blocks.

Use this to answer the question institutional investors eventually ask every growth story:

What does the next customer actually earn?

💡PROMPT TEXT:

(copy & paste the below text into your preferred AI model: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Meta, etc.)

You are conducting an institutional-grade “Unit Economics Truth Test” on one publicly traded company as of September 29, 2026.

USER PROVIDES:

TICKER:
OPTIONAL THESIS:

GOAL:

Determine whether incremental customers, units, stores, transactions, loans, subscribers, or locations create attractive shareholder value.

Adapt the analysis to the company’s business model.

Use the latest:

- 10-K
- 10-Q
- Earnings releases
- Earnings transcripts
- Investor presentations
- Segment disclosures
- Customer metrics
- Marketing expense
- Gross margins
- Credit losses where applicable
- Retention
- Store or location economics

STEP 1 — DEFINE THE ECONOMIC UNIT

Determine the most appropriate unit:

Examples:

- Customer
- Subscriber
- Store
- Vehicle
- Loan
- Transaction
- Restaurant
- Hotel room
- Delivery
- Seat
- Software workload
- Merchant
- Production unit

Explain why this is the correct unit.

STEP 2 — MEASURE UNIT REVENUE

Calculate or estimate:

- Revenue per unit
- Average selling price
- Average ticket
- ARPU
- Transaction value
- Revenue per location

Track the trend over 8 quarters where possible.

STEP 3 — MEASURE UNIT COST

Identify:

- Cost of goods
- Labor
- Acquisition cost
- Fulfillment
- Credit loss
- Support
- Marketing
- Infrastructure
- Occupancy

Calculate or estimate:

CONTRIBUTION PROFIT PER UNIT.

STEP 4 — DETERMINE CUSTOMER ACQUISITION ECONOMICS

Where relevant analyze:

- Customer acquisition cost
- Marketing efficiency
- Sales efficiency
- Payback period

Determine whether acquisition economics are:

- Improving
- Stable
- Deteriorating

STEP 5 — DETERMINE CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE

Where credible data exist, estimate:

- Retention
- Churn
- Purchase frequency
- Gross profit per customer
- Customer lifetime

Estimate:

LTV / CAC.

Avoid false precision.

STEP 6 — TEST SCALE ECONOMICS

Ask:

Does the NEXT unit have better or worse economics than the existing base?

Analyze:

- Incremental gross margin
- Incremental operating margin
- Store maturation
- Customer cohort profitability
- Geographic expansion
- Fixed-cost leverage

STEP 7 — IDENTIFY GROWTH THAT DESTROYS VALUE

Flag:

- Increasing CAC
- Falling retention
- Lower-quality customers
- Higher credit losses
- Promotional dependence
- Store cannibalization
- Negative contribution margins
- Capital-intensive growth with weak returns

STEP 8 — BUILD THE UNIT ECONOMICS TABLE

Include:

- Metric
- Current Level
- Historical Trend
- Incremental Economics
- Quality Assessment
- Risk
- Confidence Level

STEP 9 — ASSIGN SCORES

- Revenue per Unit: 1–10
- Contribution Margin Quality: 1–10
- Acquisition Efficiency: 1–10
- Retention Quality: 1–10
- Incremental Return: 1–10
- Scalability: 1–10

Calculate:

OVERALL UNIT ECONOMICS SCORE: 1–10

STEP 10 — RUN THREE GROWTH SCENARIOS

A. Unit growth accelerates
B. Unit growth stays moderate
C. Unit growth slows

For each estimate directionally:

- Revenue
- Contribution profit
- Operating margin
- Free cash flow
- Capital requirements

STEP 11 — FINAL INVESTMENT CONCLUSION

Answer:

1. Does incremental growth create or destroy value?
2. Are new cohorts better or worse than older cohorts?
3. Is the company buying growth through promotions or credit?
4. Where does scale help most?
5. What does consensus appear to misunderstand?
6. What single unit metric should investors watch next quarter?

Clearly separate facts, estimates, and inference.

Never invent customer counts, CAC, retention, margins, or credit data.

Output in a clean table + 3–5 sentence explanation why this matters right now.

END PROMPT

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