In March of 2009, Apple had its best March quarter revenue and earnings in Apple history (Apple). In order to see how this occurred, it is important to look over the financial statements of Apple. There is a lot of information available to investors who are interested in investing in a company. By looking specifically at the balance sheet of Apple I am going to determine if investing in Apple is a good idea or a bad idea. Some things I am going to consider are Apple’s assets, liabilities, and shareholder’s equity. These areas should give me insight to how the best quarter in Apple history came to be. Looking at the current assets of Apple, cash and cash equivalents went down from 11.8 billion dollars to 4.4 billion dollars. This may look bad at first, but all of the other assets must be added to this in order to get an overall picture of the assets. Short-term marketable securities went up from 10.2 billion dollars to 20.5 billion dollars. This helped Apple’s assets grow tremendously. Accounts receivable fell to 1.9 billion dollars from 2.4 billion dollars. With the rest of the current assets figured in, inventories, deferred tax assets, and other current assets, the total current assets rose to 33.8 billion dollars from 32.3 billion dollars. That was a rise of 1.5 billion dollars (Apple). It is important to take into account the rest of the assets. For example, long-term marketable securities rose 1.5 billion dollars, property, plant and equipment rose 0.91 billion dollars, goodwill stayed the same, acquired intangible assets fell 0.017 billion dollars, and other assets rose 0.56 billion dollars. Now that we know how each asset was affected during this quarter, we come to the final numbers, which are total assets rose 3.6 billion dollars. Apple grew its assets substantially during this quarter. I would think Apple would be a good company to invest in. Before I made any decisions I would investigate the balance sheet
References: Apple reports second quarter results. (2009, April 22). Retrieved August 29, 2010, from http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/04/22results.html