Evaluating Corporate Financial Performance

"Jacek's book offers a user-friendly step-by-step guide through a corporate financial statement analysis. It is a journey starting from fundamental concepts of financial reporting, and then traveling through numerous analytical tools, which are discussed with both a retrospective as well as future-oriented focus. The real-life examples greatly demonstrate not only how financial reports are useful in evaluating business performance, but also (or before all) in an assessment of corporate business risks. The auxiliary materials are innovative and highly valuable too, since they make a 'digestion' of the discussed topics much easier, especially for non-advanced readers." -Artur Osuchowski, former consultant at KPMG and E&Y, former Deputy President of Ciech S.A. and ongoing member of several supervisory boards of companies listed on Warsaw Stock Exchange "I strongly recommend this textbook to any student or practitioner who intends to develop his or her skills in interpreting accounting numbers reported on corporate financial reports. All analytical concepts, discussed in this book, are demonstrated with the use of real-life case studies based on data extracted from financial statements of multiple corporations. For example, in chapter five, several analytical tools are presented to evaluate a company with a high bankruptcy risk. The analysis in all chapters ensures a 'down-to-earth' focus, as well as a purely practical orientation of Jacek's work." -Ahmad H. Jumah, Associate Professor of Accounting, University of Illinois Springfield "Jacek's book goes beyond simply helping readers understand what financial statements contain. His book innovatively helps readers use those statements to gather true insight into a company's performance and operations. Through one timely example after another, readers come away with a far deeper sense of the power of effective and transparent financial reporting." -Eugene Soltes, McLean Family Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School "This book is extraordinary because of innovative features such as online appendix, Excel files, and webinar-form lectures. It includes interesting real-life cases which will attract readers' attention. This book is quite different from existing accounting books and will be an outstanding tool for financial statement analysis." -Ingoo Han, Professor of Accounting, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology "This is a wonderful book, the additional materials create a kind of augmented reality for learning finance, and its practical approach makes it an essential reference for finance courses based on the case method or challenge-based learning." -Felipe A. Pérez Sosa, EGADE Business School, Tecnológico de Monterrey "Jacek's writing on accounting is sharp and illuminating. His latest is no exception and a must read for those trying to understand the art of financial reporting." -Jamie Powell, FT Alphaville Jacek Welc is an Assistant Professor at Wroclaw University of Economics, Poland and a Professor of Corporate Finance at SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Germany. From 2003 to 2007 he was an independent consultant in the areas of corporate valuation, management accounting, and financial accounting. Having also been Head of the Corporate Finance Department at Dexus Partners, Jacek now co-owns a consultancy specialising in corporate financial services called WNP Ekspert. He has written and published a number of articles, as well as a two books: Applied Regression Analysis for Business: Tools, Traps and Applications (Springer, 2017) and Reading Between the Lines of Corporate Financial Reports: In Search of Financial Misstatements (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

Financial analysis is one of the most important and valuable skills for today's managers and executives. It is essential that you understand the impact on your organization's financial performance of every decision you make. Higgins gives you the essential tools, strategies, and tactics for improving the financial dimensions of your operating decisions. This completely revised Third Edition for Analysis for Financial Management covers recent developments in the finance field such as market signaling, market efficiency, and capital asset pricing and, for the first time, integrates international topics throughout the book. In addition to more traditional subjects, you'll find the facts on how to assess the performance of international subsidiaries, compare interest rates across different currencies, and manage foreign exchange exposure. Analysis for Financial Management gives you the vital facts you need to understand and apply the techniques of financial analysis to your everyday decision making. From assessing financial performance to evaluating investment opportunities and valuing companies, Higgins includes how you can use financial statements to assess a company's financial health, its strengths, weaknesses, recent performance, and future prospects; how to manage growth and decline; how financial leverage impacts an organization and its shareholders; and how to effectively incorporate risk into decision making.

This textbook offers a step-by-step guide through comprehensive financial statement analysis with real-life case studies for students of financial accounting, financial reporting, and financial statement analysis. Structured into five comprehensive sections, it begins by explaining the content of accounting reports themselves and the three primary financial statements (income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement). It deciphers the notes to financial statements and demonstrates some classical tools such as ratio analysis and multivariable credit risk models that are useful in a retrospective financial statement analysis. It includes simple step-by-step procedures of a prospective (i.e. future-oriented) financial statement simulation and closes with a comprehensive real-life case study that demonstrates a practical application of the analytical tools discussed earlier in the text. Additionally, the textbook includes online appendices consisting of additional comprehensive real-life case studies (of varying degrees of complexity and dealing with different aspects of a practical financial statement analysis), a set of MS Excel files that contain all major calculations included in tables and charts that appear in the core textbook, and a set of webinars in which the most fundamental parts of the core textbook are discussed in the form of the recorded lectures.

Countries around the world are increasingly relying on individual pension savings accounts to provide income in old age for their citizens. Although these funds have now been in place for several decades, their performance is usually measured using methods that are not meaningful in relation to this long-term objective. The recent global financial crisis has highlighted the need to develop better performance evaluation methods that are consistent with the retirement income objective of pension funds. Compiling research derived from a partnership among the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and three private partners, 'Evaluating the Financial Performance of Pension Funds' discusses the theoretical basis and key implementation issues related to the design of performance benchmarks based on life-cycle savings and investment principles. The book begins with an evaluation of the financial performance of funded pension systems using the standard mean variance framework. It then provides a discussion of the limitations inherent to applying these methods to pension funds and outlines the many other issues that should be addressed in developing more useful and meaningful performance measures through the formulation of pension-specific benchmark portfolios. Practical implementation issues are addressed through empirical examples of how such benchmarks could be developed. The book concludes with commentary and observations from several noted pension experts about the need for a new approach to performance measurement and the impact of the recent global financial crisis on pension funds.

Written for both current and aspiring managers at all levels, this book focuses on ways to improve corporate financial performance. Lewis draws from the fields of finance, accounting, economics, management, mathematics, and information systems to provide a clear exposition as well as detailed examples of practial decision-making for planning and controlling operations. He demonstrates ways to ensure acceptable levels of risk, obtain clear and relevant information, effectively balance long-term and short-term goals and needs, finance profit and growth plans, and incorporate intangibles into the decision process. Throughout, the aim is to help managers make decisions that will have a positive effect on overall corporate financial performance. Organized around three central themes, the book begins by considering the ways in which future growth and profits are shaped by today's choices. Separate chapters address such issues as the evaluation of projected financial statements, current assets, capital expenditures, the discount rate, product costs, and formulating marketing plans. In the second section, the author focuses on controlling current performance. He examines management reports and their role in controlling operations, operating controls for marketing and manufacturing performance, and factory overhead and product costs. The final section looks at information and accounting systems. The author first provides the basics of accounting to enable management to communicate effectively with accountants and other financial experts and then describes approaches to designing workable, useful information systems.

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 volume is a milestone on our journey toward developing a more comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings of corporate financial performance. Weare concerned with both the factors that cause the financial performance of some firms to be better than others at a point in time and those factors that influence the trajectory of firm financial performance over time. In addressing these issues, we consider theoretical and empirical work on financial performance, drawn from several literatures, as well as present the results from our own empirical study. The review of the theoretical and empirical work is contemporary; the major portion of data comprising the empirical study was collected in the early 1980s as part of the Columbia Business School project on corporate strategic planning, but some data sequences extend into the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Our goals are to improve understanding of firm financial performance by developing a more integrated framework and to develop a research agenda based on what we have learned. This volume consists of four chapters, 12 appendices that provide detailed technical support and development for various portions of the discussion and an extensive set of references. It interweaves results from published literature in various fields with our original empirical work and develops an integrative approach to the study of firm fmancial performance.

The fully update Third Edition of the most trusted book on financial statement analysis Recent financial events have taught us to take a more critical look at the financial disclosures provides by companies. In the Third Edition of Analysis of Financial Statements, Pamela Peterson-Drake and Frank Fabozzi once again team up to provide a practical guide to understanding and interpreting financial statements. Written to reflect current market conditions, this reliable resource will help analysts and investors use these disclosures to assess a company's financial health and risks. Throughout Analysis of Financial Statements, Third Edition, the authors demonstrate the nuts and bolts of financial analysis by applying the techniques to actual companies. Along the way, they tackle the changing complexities in the area of financial statement analysis and provide an up-to-date perspective of new acts of legislation and events that have shaped the field. Addresses changes to U.S. and international accounting standards, as well as innovations in the areas of credit risk models and factor models Includes examples, guidance, and an incorporation of information pertaining to recent events in the accounting/analysis community Covers issues of transparency, cash flow, income reporting, and much more Whether evaluating a company's financial information or figuring valuation for M&A's, analyzing financial statements is essential for both professional investors and corporate finance executives. The Third Edition of Analysis of Financial Statements contains valuable insights that can help you excel at this endeavor.