Chapter 14: Company Analysis Flashcards
What would the analysis of a company’s comprehensive income tell you?
whether management is making good use of the company’s resources.
What does the analysis of a company’s comprehensive income tell you about?
whether management is making good use of the company’s resources.
What is the possible reason for an increasing company’s revenue?
- price or volume of product increase
- introduced new products
- expand to new market
- consolidate with another company acquired in takeover
- receive an initial contribution from a new plant or diversification program
- Gain market share of competitors
- launch an aggressive advertising and promotional campaign
- benefit from new industry legislation
- temporarily increased when a strike occurred at a major competitor
- upswing in the business cycle occurred
why a analysts need to isolate the main factors affecting revenue?
to evaluate developments for their positive or negative impact on future performance
What does an analyst should take a look after revenue?
cost of sales (operation costs)
What kind of performance of operating costs that indicate a company is having difficulty keeping overall cost under control and the consequence?
If they have a rising trend over several years. This could lead to a loss of potential profit.
What is the major factor that impact the gross profit margin of a company?
The cost of raw materials. (Companies rely on commodities such as copper or nickel, for example, may have to cope with wide swings in raw material costs from one year to another)
What are the reasons for a company to pay unusually high dividends? (>65%)
- stable earning
- declining earnings which may indicate a future cut in the dividend
- earnings based on resources that are being depleted as in the case of some mining companies
What are the reasons for a company to pay low dividends?
- earnings reinvested
- growing earning may indicate a future increase in the dividend
- cyclical earnings at their peak, along with a company policy to maintain the same dividend in food and bad times
- policy for buying back shares rather than distributing the high dividends.
What should you consider in analyzing the statement of financial position?
capital structure (debt and equity) and the effect of leverage
What should you consider in analyzing capital structure?
- if there’s large debt issue approaching maturity (they may refinance by new securities)
- Retractable securities (company may have to refinance if investors choose to retract) and extendible bonds
- convertible securities (represent a potential decrease in earnings per common share EPS through dilution
- any outstanding warrants or stock options represent a potential increase in common shares outstanding
When do the earnings of a compnay are said to be leveraged?
if the capital structure contains debt or preferred shares -> can affect EPS quicklier in both direction when using leverage.
what are other features that you should analyze a company apart from revenue, operation cost, capital structure, and leverage before investing in common share?
- Qualitative analysis (assess management effectiveness and other intangibles)
- liquidity of common shares (how easy to sell or buy)
- continuous monitoring.
What are the warning signs you can find in the Notes of the Financial statements?
- Changes in accounting practices or auditors (revenue and profit might change just because of that. A change of auditor might be a sign that they don’t agree in how certain’s transaction treated)
- A series of mergers and takeovers (can acquire a series of smaller companies to make statement better or hide the loss of parent company)
Why we should use trend analysis?
because one-year ratio have limited value on their own and they become meaningful when comparing with other ratios (compare with a different year or with similar companies or with industry averages)
How analysts identify trends?
- Selecting a base period, treating figure or ratio for that period as 100
- dividing it into the comparable ratios for subsequent period.
What is the advantage of trend ratios?
- show changes clearly
- simple and easy than the alternative
What is the disadvantage of trend ratios?
- If the base period is not truly representative, the trend line is misleading
- Impossible to use if the base period figure is negative.
When compare to industry ratio, should you use the current average or historical industry standards?
both to get a fair and thorough analysis.
what are the four types of ratios are commonly used to analyze a company’s financial statements?
- Liquidity ratio
- Risk analysis ratios
- Operating performance ratio
- Value ratios
What is liquidity ratio?
Used to judge the company’s ability to meet its short-term commitments (ex: working capital raito = current assets/current liabilities)
What is risk analysis ratios?
Show how well the company can deal with its debt obligations (ex: debt-to-equity ratio)
What is operating performance ratios?
illustrate how well management is making use of the company’s resources (ex: net profit margin ratio)
What are value ratios?
show the investor what the company’s shares are worth or the return on owning them (ex: price-to-earnings ratio P/E)
What do you need to notice when using ratios to analyze?
- Ratios must be used in the context
- Ratios are not proof just clues
- ratio is not the same for all companies (supermarket vs producing company)
What are the common liquidity ratios?
- Working capital ratio
2. Quick ratio (the acid test)
What is working capital ratio ? (Current ratio)
= Current assets/current liabilities
Ex: if it = 2.8 means they have 2.84 of cash and equivalents to pay for every 1 dollar current liabilities.
When analyzing working captial ratio, what should you notice?
- What are the current asset, cash or inventory, what is the inventory turnover rate, credit terms, …
- Current ratio does not translate to multiples (20 is not 10 times better than the company has 2, because >5 have been an unnecessary accumulation of funds.
- Different business have different working capital requirements (cycle of produce and sell is quick then they don’t need too much current asset because they can receive money from the sale)
What is quick ratio? (the acid test)
= (current assets - inventories)/current liabilities
- Show how well current liabilities are covered by cash and by items with a ready cash value.
- No standard for quick ratio but >=1 is considered good liquid position. However, sometimes <1 is still also good.
What are the common ratio of risk analysis ratio?
- Asset coverage ratio
- Debt-to-equity ratio
- Cash flow-to-total debt outstanding ratio
- Interest coverage ratio
What is asset coverage ratio?
- shows a company’s ability to cover its debt obligations with its assets after all non-debt liabilities have been satisfied
- Show the next tangible assets (NTA) of the company for each $1000 of total debt outstanding -> enable debtholder to measure the protection provided by tangible assets after all liabilities have been met.
How to calculate asset coverage ratio?
= [tangible assets - (current liabilities - short term debt)]/total debt outstanding
- Ex: =5 means company has 5000$ for each 1000$ of total debt outstanding.
- Industry standards for this ratio vary.
What is the tangible asset?
= total assets - goodwill and other intangible assets