Glad to hear you like our material! 
we’re also more than happy to take some tough love when you spot something we can do better 
I’ll reply here as the question relates to our research overall. Ramping up research coverage of any company requires us to build a good understanding of their markets. Some sectors we have more history with and in those cases starting a new coverage is quicker. We try to pool similar companies together so our analysts get information synergies where available.
With new sectors (like Aiforia with their very specific niche within healthcare software products) getting to a good understanding of market takes more work. Sources used and the order in which things are done varies a bit by analyst/sector but typically I go through the following:
- Target company’s official reports (ideally dating back multiple years if available), prospectus and presentations (videos & powerpoints) and other published information (company website etc.)
- Sources cited by the company in their communication (assess the validity of their statements independently)
- Peer companies’ official reports / websites
- Industry/Market study companies’ articles & reports (depending a bit on availability)
- Articles by industry thought leaders
- Find counterarguments for key statements forming the company’s equity story (figure out what you think is reasonable to believe & where the key risks are)
- Test your counterarguments and drill into details in a meeting with company management (could take anything from ~2 to 8 hours)
- Talk to any connections we have in the industry (not always possible)
Writing the initiation of coverage -report (usually ~30-50 pages) is also a great way to get clarity on what really matters for a given company. In many cases after going through a big pile of information you can pinpoint just a handful of things that make or break the company’s equity story. During the ~4-6 weeks we spend on the initiation report we get to a good level of comfort with our views.
Our analysts often have some experience/connection to the sectors they analyse (not always), but I think this is only very rarely a requirement (maybe only for drug developers) to do quality research.