Analysis and Uses of Financial Statements (FSDP)

Pre-requistes:

Knowledge Level:

Major Topics:

• Objectives of Financial Statement Analysis and Financial Reporting
• Accounting Assumptions, Principles, Procedures and Policies
• Understanding Financial Statements
• An Overview of Financial Statement Analysis
• Analysis of Liquidity and Activity
• Analysis of Solvency and Capital Structure
• Profitability Analysis
• Market Strength and Overall Evaluation
• Analysis of Cash Flows
• Interim Statements and Segment Analysis

Learning Objectives:

• State the objectives of financial reporting.
• Recognize the qualitative characteristics of accounting information.
• Recognize the basic assumptions of accounting.
• Identify the basic principles of accounting.
• Recognize the basic financial statements: the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows.
• Identify the key balance sheet items portraying a company’s financial position.
• Recognize the most important items on the statement of cash flows.
• Identify the annual report components, including the financial statements, footnotes, review of operations, auditor’s report, and supplementary schedules
• Assess a company’s cash inflows and cash outflows.
• Recognize the important aspects of financial statement analysis.
• Compare horizontal analysis and vertical analysis.
• Identify the basic components of ratio analysis.
• Identify the limitations of ratio analysis.
• Recognize different liquidity ratios and how they can be used to compare companies.
• Compute and interpret liquidity ratios used to analyze a company’s ability to pay debt.
• Compute and interpret activity ratios.
• Recognize how inventory and receivable factors will affect business analysis and comparisons.
• Identify different structure ratios used to analyze the capital structure of a company.
• Recognize operating leverage and financial leverage.
• Recognize how financing, debt and interest affect company analysis and performance.
• Recognize and apply key ratios related to profitability.
• Identify how to compute return on investment (ROI), and how to enhance ROI.
• Recognize how return on assets can be used to assess management performance.
• Recognize a wide range of market test ratios used to measure market strength of a company.
• Recognize how market test ratios evaluate a company’s financial performance.
• Recognize the key items on the statement of cash flows to analyze company performance.
• Identify and apply the major ratios used to evaluate the cash flow of a company.
• Recognize the accounting associated with interim reporting.
• Identify the disclosure requirements for major segments of a business.

Designed For: