The Language and Tools of Financial Analysis

This week we will define and explain the key financial statements produced by a company and reported to its shareholders. We will discuss the different core elements within those statements following basic accounting principles with the discussion framed in reference to excerpts from the actual financial statements produced by the US-listed food company Kellogg's.

Understanding the importance and the accounting principles underpinning the key financial statements of a company, we now turn our attention to synthesizing and condensing the financial statement information for the purpose of financial analysis. Specifically, we demonstrate how financial analysts use ratio analysis to measure relative profitability, leverage, efficiency and the liquidity of a company. Again, we utilise information from the financial statements of Kellogg's and its competitor Kraft to demonstrate these financial analysis techniques.

Having established initial basic financial analyst's toolset in the first two weeks of this course, some caution is warranted as we turn our attention to some of the pitfalls associated with uncritical use of financial statements by analysts. Specifically, we highlight how the use of historical cost and accrual-based accounting might lead to sub-optimal corporate financial decision-making. We then discuss how the agency relationship between management and the owners of a company may also lead to poor corporate decision-making. We conclude with a cautionary tale of misleading accounting practices and the regulator's response to these cases.