How to Analyze Financial Statements (Completed)

Accounting and finance is supposed to be the international language of business. If so, then why do we struggle so much to make sense of the numbers? Are we so busy managing our business and leading our staff, that we don’t have time to wade through the financials, discover the trends, draw proper conclusions and take appropriate action? What if our peers, or worse, our competition understands our numbers better than we do? In this session, Miles Hutchinson, experienced CGMA and business adviser, will explain how to quickly and thoroughly analyze the financial condition and results of operations of any publicly traded company.

Who Should Attend
Financial Executives, HR Managers, Accounting Managers, Department Managers, and Business Unit Managers.

Topics Covered

• Components of the annual report of a prominent publicly traded company
• Use the annual report to perform a fundamental financial analysis
• The various types of financial analysis and their purpose
• Key benchmarks to help determine whether a company's ratios are in line with competitors
• Horizontal and vertical analysis and how they can be used to identify key trends
• Use our model to perform financial analysis on other company financial statements, including yours
• Receive benchmark information to use in determining the quality of your analyses
• Learn about resources available to perform comparative studies between companies in the same economic sector — even private companies

Learning Objectives

• Recognize how to analyze the numbers, and use this intel to juice up virtually every facet of your organization's operations from marketing, to finance, to HR, to customer service and sales
• Identify and apply a proven model to quickly assess the financial condition and results of operations of any business using trend and ratio analysis

Level
Basic

Instructional Method
Group: Internet-based

NASBA Field of Study
Accounting (2 hours)

Program Prerequisites
None

Advance Preparation
None