Reading30. Financial Statement Analysis: Applications

30.1 评估企业过往经营业绩（Evaluating past financial performance）

• Trends in a company’s financial ratios
• Differences between its financial ratios and those of its competitors or industry average ratios can indicate important aspects of a firm’s business strategy.
• It is important for an analyst to understand a subject firm’s business strategy.

30.2 预测企业未来的经营成果（Projecting Future Financial Performance）

• Top-down approach
  • GDP growth
  • Industry growth
  • Firm’s growth
• Bottom-up approach

30.3 信用风险评估（Assessing Credit Risk）

• Credit analysts
  • 3Cs
    • Character: the firm management’s professional reputation and the firm’s history of debt repayment
    • Collateral: The ability to pledge specific collateral reduces lender risk.
    • Capacity to repay: requires close examination of a firm’s financial statements and ratios.
• Credit rating agencies
  • Scale and diversification
  • Operational efficiency
  • Margin stability
  • Leverage

30.4 权益投资分析（Equity Investments Analysis）

• Find potential equity investments

  Potentially attractive equity investments can be identified by screening a universe of stocks, using minimum or maximum values of one or more ratios. Which (and how many) ratios to use, what minimum or maximum values to use, and how much importance to give each ratio all present challenges to the analyst.

  • Growth investors
    • Focus on earnings growth.
  • Value investors
    • Focus on low share price in relation to earnings or assets.
  • Market oriented
    • Neither value or growth focused.

30.5 分析师对财务报告的调整（Analyst Adjustment to Reported Financials）

• Adjustment for Inventory accounting

  • $FIFOendinginventory=LIFOendinginventory+LIFOreserve$
  • FIFO COGS = LIFO COGS-change in the LIFO reserve​

• Property, Plant, and Equipment

• Analyst Adjustments Related to Goodwill

• Capitalization and expensing

• Analyst Adjustments Related to Off-Balance-Sheet Financing