I spent an afternoon testing whether AI could handle something every equity analyst dreads: spreading historical revenue data and building revenue projections from scratch. The task? Extract Tesla's revenue by segment from their 2024 annual report, identify the key drivers, and set up a 5-year projection model.
Spoiler: The results surprised me-both good and bad.
The Setup
The Task: I needed to spread Tesla's revenue and revenue drivers with projections through 2029 for a financial model. This meant:
Pulling historical revenue by segment from the 10-K and investor presentation
Identifying key revenue drivers (unit volumes, ASP, capacity metrics)
Calculating growth rates
Building a projection framework with driver-based assumptions
Why I Tried AI: Excel AI tools have been marketing themselves as analyst replacements. This seemed like the perfect test case-not trivial, but not impossibly complex either. If they could nail this, maybe the hype has some truth to it.
My Background: I'm an advanced user, but I approached this like an intermediate analyst would. No fancy prompt engineering tricks-just straightforward instructions.
The AI Workflow
Tools I Tested:
