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.

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.

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.

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

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

This course teaches students how to read and analyze reports that are fundamental to gauging the health of any business. It explains how to interpret balance sheets, income statements, and statements of cash flows and considers the numbers in the context of external economic conditions. Topics include: basic concepts and principles of financial accounting and reporting; key financial statements--the balance sheet, income statement, and the statement of cash flows--from the perspective of senior management; applying the right type of analysis--ratio, vertical, or horizontal--to the right statement; recent changes in legislation, rules, and standards of practice that affect accounting and finance; provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and its impact on auditing processes and financial statement value chain; industry statistics, competitive considerations, and other nonfinancial information. --