For courses in Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting, Financial Statement Analysis, Introduction to Business, or MBA finance courses. Understanding the Corporate Annual Report: Nuts, Bolts, and A Few Loose Screws provides a clearly written, step-by-step guide to understanding corporate annual reports. Authors Fraser and Ormiston instruct readers on how to ignore the PR letters from the corporate management team, engaging graphics, and other "garnishes" that typically accompany current annual reports in order to focus on what really counts--a company's performance and financial health! Throughout the text, the authors examine management's attempts to manipulate earnings and other performance measures, and they explain what the numbers in the report really mean.
An annual report is a powerful and revealing document about a company's financial standing, and can offer the savvy reader substantial insight about where the company may be headed in the future. But to the untrained eye, it may seem like walls of accounting technicalities provided to fill up space between the glossy photos and the upbeat "Message from the CEO."Annual Reports 101 gets past the PR machine to show the meaning behind the math. This straightforward guide reveals how to read the primary financial documents in the report, and then extract more information--from the numbers themselves and from the often fluffy text--than some companies want the public to know. The book shows how to watch out for "red flags," decipher footnotes and see past common practices that, while legal, may not give the most accurate picture. Readers of annual reports include potential investors and business partners, financial advisers, company employees, lenders and many others whose stake in the success of a public company is crucial to their own.
This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. A supplementary text for a variety of Business courses, including Financial Statement Analysis, Investments, Personal ¿Finance, and Financial Planning and Analysis ¿ An Analytical Approach to Understanding and Interpreting Business Financial Statements ¿ Understanding Financial Statements improves the student’s ability to translate a financial statement into a meaningful map for business decisions. The material covered in each chapter helps students approach financial statements with enhanced confidence and understanding of a firm’s historical, current, and prospective financial condition and performance. The Eleventh Edition includes new case studies based on existing companies and enhanced learning tools to help students quickly grasp and apply the materials. Fraser and Ormiston presents material in an engaging fashion that helps readers make sense of complex financial information, leading to intelligent (and profitable!) decision-making.
"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.
Over the years, the titles in this popular series have helped ordinary consumers understand principles of prudent money management as a key to personal financial security. Written by experienced financial and investment specialists, Barron’s Business Keys use non-technical language that takes the mystery out of business practices. They offer up-to-date advice on saving, investing, seeking mortgages and other loans, protecting one’s assets, coping with taxes, and managing many other money-related issues. This updated edition advises investors on how to cut through the public relations jargon, focus on the annual report’s important facts and figures, and use that information to assess a company’s financial health.
Discover how to decipher financial reports Especially relevant in today's world of corporate scandals and new accounting laws, the numbers in a financial report contain vitally important information about where a company has been and where it is going. Packed with new and updated information, Reading Financial Reports For Dummies, 3rd Edition gives you a quick but clear introduction to financial reports–and how to decipher the information in them. New information on the separate accounting and financial reporting standards for private/small businesses versus public/large businesses New content to match SEC and other governmental regulatory changes New information about how the analyst-corporate connection has actually changed the playing field The impact of corporate communications and new technologies New examples that reflect current trends Updated websites and resources Reading Financial Reports For Dummies is for investors, traders, brokers, managers, and anyone else who is looking for a reliable, up-to-date guide to reading financial reports effectively.
Introduction to Business covers the scope and sequence of most introductory business courses. The book provides detailed explanations in the context of core themes such as customer satisfaction, ethics, entrepreneurship, global business, and managing change. Introduction to Business includes hundreds of current business examples from a range of industries and geographic locations, which feature a variety of individuals. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of business concepts, with attention to the knowledge and skills necessary for student success in this course and beyond. This is an adaptation of Introduction to Business by OpenStax. You can access the textbook as pdf for free at openstax.org. Minor editorial changes were made to ensure a better ebook reading experience. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The purpose of this book is to help readers understand the basics of understanding financial statements. Material covered includes a step-by-step instruction on how to read and understand the balance sheet, the income statement, and the cash flow statement. It also covers information about how these three statements are interconnected with one another.
Annual corporate reports provide a window into a company?s strategy for future growth; however, many financial managers as well as the investing public focus exclusively on corporate earnings and fail to understand all the factors that comprise the earnings computation. Understanding Corporate Annual Reports explains the regulatory environment surrounding annual reports, providing a detailed review of how to read reports correctly. Using Home Depot?s annual report as the primary example, Brian Stanko and Thomas Zeller?s easy-to-use guide examines a variety of types of financial reports, addressing both SEC and FASB regulations. Understanding Corporate Annual Reports allows readers to appreciate the complete implications of a corporate annual report.
