Meanings and Importance of Financial Statement Analysis

All financial statements are essentially historically historical documents. They tell what has happened during a particular period of time. However most users of financial statements are concerned about what will happen in the future. Stockholders are concerned with future earnings and dividends. Creditors are concerned with the company’s future ability to repay its debts. Managers are concerned  with the company’s ability to finance future expansion. Despite the fact that financial statements are historical documents, they can still provide valuable information bearing on all of these concerns.

Financial statement analysis involves careful selection of data from financial statements for the primary purpose of forecasting the financial health of the company. This is accomplished by examining trends in key financial data, comparing financial data across companies, and analyzing key financial ratios.

Managers are also widely concerned with the financial ratios. First the ratios provide indicators of how well the company and its business units are performing. Some of these ratios would ordinarily be used in a balanced scorecard approach. The specific ratios selected depend on the company’s strategy. For example a company that wants to emphasize responsiveness to customers may closely monitor the inventory turnover ratio. Since managers must report to shareholders and may wish to raise funds from external sources, managers must pay attention to the financial ratios used by external inventories to evaluate the company’s investment potential and creditworthiness.

Although financial statement analysis is a highly useful tool, it has two limitations. These two limitations involve the comparability of financial data between companies and the need to look beyond ratios. Comparison of one company with another can provide valuable clues about the financial health of an organization. Unfortunately, differences in accounting methods between companies sometime makes it difficult to compare the companies’ financial data. For example if one company values its inventories by the LIFO method and another firm by average cost method, then direct comparisons of financial data such as inventory valuations are and cost of goods sold between the two firms may be misleading. Some times enough data are presented in foot notes to the financial statements to restate data to a comparable basis. Otherwise, the analyst should keep in mind the lack of comparability of the data before drawing any definite conclusion. Nevertheless, even with this limitation in mind, comparisons of key ratios with other companies and with industry averages often suggest avenues for further investigation.

An inexperienced analyst may assume that ratios are sufficient in themselves as a basis for judgment about the future. Nothing could be further from the truth. Conclusions based on ratio analysis must be regarded as tentative. Ratios should not be viewed as an end, but rather they should be viewed as a starting point, as indicators of what to pursue in greater depth. They raise may questions, but they rarely answer any question by themselves. In addition to ratios, other sources of data should be analyzed in order to make judgments about the future of an organization. They analyst should look, for example, at industry trends, technological changes, changes in consumer tastes, changes in broad economic factors, and changes within the firm itself. A recent change in a key management position, for example, might provide a basis for optimism about the future, even though the past performance of the firm may have been mediocre.

Few figures appearing on financial statements have much significance standing by themselves. It is the relationship of one figure to another and the amount and direction of change over time that are important in financial statement analysis. How does the analyst key in on significant relationship? How does the analyst dig out the important trends and changes in a company? Three analytical techniques are widely used; dollar and percentage changes on statements, common-size statements, and financial ratios formulas.

Understanding Financial Statements

Financial accounting’s focus is on the financial reports distributed to people outside of the company. The major component of financial reporting is the financial statements: income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flows, and the statement of stockholders’ equity. The income statement indicates a company’s profitability during a specified time period such as one year, three months or one month.

Under accrual accounting the income statement reports the amount of revenues earned and the expenses that were incurred to earn the revenues. Expenses also include costs that expired during the period of the income statement. If a corporation’s stock is publicly traded, the income statement will also report the earnings per share of common stock. The balance sheet reports a corporation’s assets, liabilities, and stockholders’ equity as of a specific instant, such as midnight of December 31. Most balance sheets will group all of the current assets and all of the current liabilities. This allows readers to easily see the corporation’s working capital and current ratio. The statement of cash flows organizes the explanations of the change in cash and cash equivalents into three sections: operating activities, investment activities, and financing activities. The statement of stockholders equity provides a summary of the changes occurring to stockholders’ equity during the accounting period. The changes include net income, dividends declared, purchase of treasury stock, and other comprehensive income.

In order for the readers of these financial statements to make comparisons with other companies, it is necessary that the financial statements follow some common rules. The rules are referred to as generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP (pronounced gap) and consist of several components. One component of GAAP is the basic or fundamental accounting principles and concepts such as cost, matching, going concern, economic entity, materiality, conservatism, consistency, reliability, and others. You can see a brief explanation of these basic principles along with an example of each at AccountingCoach.com.

Another part of GAAP includes the detailed rules established by the Financial Accounting Standards Board or FASB (pronounced fas Bee). These pronouncements are entitled statements of financial accounting standards. FASB interpretations are also part of GAAP. You can view these pronouncements at [http://www.FASB.org/st]. The accounting rules established by the predecessors of the FASB remain as GAAP unless they have been superceded by the FASB.

Lastly, GAAP includes industry practices. For example, the balance sheet of a public utility will list the plant assets ahead of its current assets. Unique reporting practices often occur in industries that are regulated by government agencies.

The financial accounting and financial reporting of publicly traded corporations also include the annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (Form 10-K), the annual report to stockholders, and various press releases on financial matters.