Overview of
Financial Statement Analysis
REVIEW
Financial statement analysis is one important step in business analysis. Business analysis is the process of evaluating a company’s economic prospects and risks. This includes analyzing a company’s business environment, its strategies, and its financial position and performance. Business analysis is useful in a wide range of business decisions such as investing in equity or debt securities, extending credit through short or long term loans, valuing a business in an initial public offering (IPO), and evaluating restructurings including mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. Financial statement analysis is the application of analytical tools and techniques to general-purpose financial statements and related data to derive estimates and inferences useful in business analysis. Financial statement analysis reduces one’s reliance on hunches, guesses, and intuition for business decisions. This chapter describes business analysis and the role of financial statement analysis. The chapter also introduces financial statements and explains how they reflect underlying business activities. Several tools and techniques of financial statement analysis are also introduced. Application of these tools and techniques is illustrated in a preliminary business analysis of Dell.
OUTLINE
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|Introduction to Business analysis |
|Types of Business Analysis |
|Credit Analysis |
|Equity Analysis