Beginner's Guide to Understanding Financial Statements and Financial Ratios


Book Description

Reading and understanding financial statements and financial ratios is a critical skill needed by investors, finance students, accounting students, and business students. Without this skill, investors are left with selecting stocks based on 'water-cooler' conversations or because they like the company name - not a great foundation to build a retirement portfolio. As for students, without a solid foundation with understanding financial statements, specifically, the income statement and balance sheet, and financial ratios, passing basic business courses will prove exceptionally difficult.This leads to the purpose of the book. This book was written to teach investors, business students, finance students, and accounting students about basic and advanced accounting and finance concepts and to apply the concepts in analyzing five consecutive years' of financial statements and financial ratios.Book and Chapter StructuresThis book was structured to help investors and students quickly and efficiently learn to read, understand, and use a company's income statement, balance sheet, and popular financial ratios for financial analysis and investment purposes. Financial Statements - The income statement and balance sheet sections start with a brief explanation of each financial statement. With this foundation set, I then define, graph, and offer analysis tips and examples for each financial statement line item, such as revenues and long-term debt. Financial Ratios - This section starts with showing formulas for popular financial ratios and also calculated financial ratios for five years, based on our example financial statements provided. Each financial ratio is then defined, formulas provided, calculations for the ratios illustrated, financial analysis tips offered, ratios graphed, covering a five-year time frame, in most cases, and brief analysis of the ratios.Important financial ratios defined, calculated, and analysis tips offered includes the current ratio, cash ratio, quick ratio, net working capital ratio, total asset turnover ratio, fixed asset turnover ratio, days sales outstanding, inventory turnover, accounts receivable turnover, working capital turnover, accounts payable turnover, return on assets, return on equity, profit margin, gross profit margin, and several more.In the end, hopefully, you will have a better understanding of financial statements and financial ratios in general.




Beginner's Handbook and Guide to Financial Statements and Financial Ratios


Book Description

Reading and understanding financial statements and financial ratios is a critical skill needed by investors, finance students, accounting students, and business students. Without this skill, investors are left with selecting stocks based on 'water-cooler' conversations or because they like the company name. Not a great foundation to build a retirement portfolio. As for students, without a solid foundation with understanding financial statements, specifically, the income statement and balance sheet, and financial ratios, passing basic business courses will be exceptionally difficult.Unfortunately, investors are not given a crash course on financial statement and ratio analysis, before being allowed to invest. As for students, their professors are just too busy with preparing lectures, grading papers, and attending conferences to offer in-depth assistance with grasping concepts of financial statements and ratios. This leaves the financial statement and ratio foundation building to you, the reader.This book is structured to help investors and students quickly and efficiently learn to read and understand a company's income statement, balance sheet, and popular financial ratios used in financial analysis and business courses. For each financial statement line item and financial ratio, I first define the line item or ratio in 'finance terms.' This is the technical definition used in most business courses. Next, I offer the term or definition in understandable, or laymen's terms by employing an 'In other words' segment. The last parts for the financial statements and ratios review, is the 'analysis tips' and financial ratio formula. For this segment, professional tips for analyzing trends, or changes, in the financial statement line items or financial ratios is conducted, using in-depth discussions and visual aids, such as graphs and charts.In the end, my wish for you from reading this book is a thorough understanding of financial statements and financial ratios. Further, I hope that you will use this book as a quick reference guide for future use.




Ratios Made Simple


Book Description

Ratios provide an extremely effective method of understanding company accounts. At their most basic this usually involves taking one figure from the published accounts and dividing it by another - however, this seemingly simple process can reveal an enormous amount about both the nature and performance of a company. 'Ratios Made Simple' looks at ratios from the perspective of an investor, providing a toolkit for investors to use to accurately analyse a company from its accounts. This book is divided into nine chapters, with each chapter looking at a different aspect of potential concern to an investor: 1. Profitability Ratios 2. Investment Ratios 3. Dividend Cover 4. Margins 5. Gearing 6. Solvency Ratios 7. Efficiency Ratios 8. Policy Ratios 9. Volatility For each ratio, financial expert Robert Leach provides a detailed definition, explains how it works, describes its use. Investors are also given a simple explanation of how to calculate each ratio, what the ratio means and how the investor should apply the answers in making investment decisions. This book provides the investor with an essential guide to the use of these powerful analytical tools - tools that should form a vital part of an investor's decision-making process.




The Guide to Understanding Financial Statements


Book Description

There's no mystery to understanding company financial statements Even if you have no financial or accounting background, you can read those intimidating-looking financial statements as easily as A-B-C. The second edition of The Guide to Understanding Financial Statements, by S.B. Costales and Geza Szurovy, makes all the numbers and jargon absolutely clear. In seconds you'll spot a company's strengths and weaknesses, see how its performance measures up, and have a solid basis for judging future prospects. The material is so easy to grasp, you'll know it all on first reading, Discover: what a balance sheet really reveals; the true significance of a profit and loss statement; what the six most important financial ratios are, and what each can tell you; how to tell when the numbers are favorable or not; how to spot fraud; how to discover whether the stated value of certain asests is true; much more.




Financial Statement Analysis


Book Description

Praise for Financial Statement Analysis A Practitioner's Guide Third Edition "This is an illuminating and insightful tour of financial statements, how they can be used to inform, how they can be used to mislead, and how they can be used to analyze the financial health of a company." -Professor Jay O. Light Harvard Business School "Financial Statement Analysis should be required reading for anyone who puts a dime to work in the securities markets or recommends that others do the same." -Jack L. Rivkin Executive Vice President (retired) Citigroup Investments "Fridson and Alvarez provide a valuable practical guide for understanding, interpreting, and critically assessing financial reports put out by firms. Their discussion of profits-'quality of earnings'-is particularly insightful given the recent spate of reporting problems encountered by firms. I highly recommend their book to anyone interested in getting behind the numbers as a means of predicting future profits and stock prices." -Paul Brown Chair-Department of Accounting Leonard N. Stern School of Business, NYU "Let this book assist in financial awareness and transparency and higher standards of reporting, and accountability to all stakeholders." -Patricia A. Small Treasurer Emeritus, University of California Partner, KCM Investment Advisors "This book is a polished gem covering the analysis of financial statements. It is thorough, skeptical and extremely practical in its review." -Daniel J. Fuss Vice Chairman Loomis, Sayles & Company, LP




Financial Analysis 101


Book Description

This book provides a path to understanding the complexity of financial statements, financial ratios, and financial metrics savvy investors tend to focus on in order to measure a company's financial health. 1




The Interpretation of Financial Statements


Book Description

"All investors, from beginners to old hands, should gain from the use of this guide, as I have." From the Introduction by Michael F. Price, president, Franklin Mutual Advisors, Inc. Benjamin Graham has been called the most important investment thinker of the twentieth century. As a master investor, pioneering stock analyst, and mentor to investment superstars, he has no peer. The volume you hold in your hands is Graham's timeless guide to interpreting and understanding financial statements. It has long been out of print, but now joins Graham's other masterpieces, The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis, as the three priceless keys to understanding Graham and value investing. The advice he offers in this book is as useful and prescient today as it was sixty years ago. As he writes in the preface, "if you have precise information as to a company's present financial position and its past earnings record, you are better equipped to gauge its future possibilities. And this is the essential function and value of security analysis." Written just three years after his landmark Security Analysis, The Interpretation of Financial Statements gets to the heart of the master's ideas on value investing in astonishingly few pages. Readers will learn to analyze a company's balance sheets and income statements and arrive at a true understanding of its financial position and earnings record. Graham provides simple tests any reader can apply to determine the financial health and well-being of any company. This volume is an exact text replica of the first edition of The Interpretation of Financial Statements, published by Harper & Brothers in 1937. Graham's original language has been restored, and readers can be assured that every idea and technique presented here appears exactly as Graham intended. Highly practical and accessible, it is an essential guide for all business people--and makes the perfect companion volume to Graham's investment masterpiece The Intelligent Investor.




How to Use Financial Statements: A Guide to Understanding the Numbers


Book Description

Includes an overview of financial statements, an introduction to the accrual concept, explanations of profit and loss, cash flows and balance sheets, and an overview of special inventory valuation and depreciation reporting.




The Entrepreneur's Guide to Financial Statements


Book Description

Like a detailed trail map through the jungle of finance, this book guides readers past small-business financial pitfalls, showing readers how to fine-tune operations and enhance profitability. Easy to read and full of engaging stories, this book teaches the basics of true financial management—re-made just for small businesses. It's perfect for entrepreneurs who want to get more from their accounting without getting stuck in the details. The author examines each of the three major financial statements and explains both how and why business owners should utilize these powerful tools to create a more stable, more profitable business. Whether one's business has one employee or 100, the small business owner will gain a deeper understanding of why finance is so critical to survival and growth. Written by an experienced CFO and entrepreneur, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Financial Statements uses illustrations, real-life stories, and crystal-clear writing to show business owners the importance of "the numbers" and the critical nature of finance to the survival, profitability, and growth of their small businesses.




Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements


Book Description

With an insider's view of the mind of the master, Mary Buffett and David Clark have written a simple guide for reading financial statements from Buffett's successful perspective. They clearly outline Warren Buffett's strategies in a way that will appeal to newcomers and seasoned Buffettologists alike. Inspired by the seminal work of Buffett's mentor, Benjamin Graham, this book presents Buffett's interpretation of financial statements with anecdotes and quotes from the master investor himself. Destined to become a classic in the world of investment books, Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements is the perfect companion volume to The New Buffettology and The Tao of Warren Buffett.