CFA Institute is the premier association for investment professionals around the world, with more than 150,000 CFA charterholders worldwide in 165+ countries and regions. Since 1963 the organization has developed and administered the renowned Chartered Financial Analyst® Program. With a rich history of leading the investment profession, CFA Institute has set the highest standards in ethics, education, and professional excellence within the global investment community and is the foremost authority on investment profession conduct and practice. Each book in the CFA Institute Investment Series is geared toward industry practitioners along with graduate-level finance students and covers the most important topics in the industry. The authors of these cutting-edge books are themselves industry professionals and academics and bring their wealth of knowledge and expertise to this series.
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Preface
International Financial Statement Analysis is a practically oriented introduction to financial statement analysis. Each chapter covers one major area of financial statement analysis and is written by highly credentialed experts. By taking a global perspective on accounting standards, with a focus on international financial reporting standards (IFRS), and by selecting a broad range of companies for illustration, the book well equips the reader for practice in today’s global marketplace.
The content was developed in partnership by a team of distinguished academics and practitioners, chosen for their acknowledged expertise in the field, and guided by CFA Institute. It is written specifically with the investment practitioner in mind and is replete with examples and practice problems that reinforce the learning outcomes and demonstrate real-world applicability.
The CFA Program Curriculum, from which the content of this book was drawn, is subjected to a rigorous review process to assure that it is:
Faithful to the findings of our ongoing industry practice analysis
Valuable to members, employers, and investors
Globally relevant
Generalist (as opposed to specialist) in nature
Replete with sufficient examples and practice opportunities
Pedagogically sound
The accompanying workbook is a useful reference that provides Learning Outcome Statements, which describe exactly what readers will learn and be able to demonstrate after mastering the accompanying material. Additionally, the workbook has summary overviews and practice problems for each chapter.
We hope you will find this and other books in the CFA Institute Investment Series helpful in your efforts to grow your investment knowledge, whether you are a relatively new entrant or an experienced veteran striving to keep up to date in the ever-changing market environment. CFA Institute, as a long-term committed participant in the investment profession and a not-for-profit global membership association, is pleased to provide you with this opportunity.
The CFA Program
If the subject matter of this book interests you, and you are not already a CFA charterholder, we hope you will consider registering for the CFA Program and starting progress toward earning the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. The CFA designation is a globally recognized standard of excellence for measuring the competence and integrity of investment professionals. To earn the CFA charter, candidates must successfully complete the CFA Program, a global graduate-level self-study program that combines a broad curriculum with professional conduct requirements as preparation for a career as an investment professional.
Anchored by a practice-based curriculum, the CFA Program Body of Knowledge reflects the knowledge, skills, and abilities identified by professionals as essential to the investment decision-making process. This body of knowledge maintains its relevance through a regular, extensive survey of practicing CFA charterholders across the globe. The curriculum covers 10 general topic areas, ranging from equity and fixed-income analysis to portfolio management—all with a heavy emphasis on the application of ethics in professional practice. Known for its rigor and breadth, the CFA Program curriculum highlights principles common to every market so that professionals who earn the CFA designation have a thoroughly global investment perspective and a profound understanding of the global marketplace.
Acknowledgments
Authors
We would like to thank the many distinguished authors who contributed outstanding chapters in their respective areas of expertise:
Michael A. Broihahn, CFA
Jack T. Ciesielski, CFA, CPA
Timothy S. Doupnik, PhD
Elizabeth A. Gordon
Elaine Henry, PhD, CFA
Elbie Louw, CFA
Thomas R. Robinson, PhD, CFA
Karen O’Connor Rubsam, CPA, CFA
Thomas I. Selling, PhD, CPA
Hennie van Greuning, CFA
Susan Perry Williams, PhD
Reviewers
Special thanks to all the reviewers, curriculum advisors, and question writers who helped to ensure high practical relevance, technical correctness, and understandability of the material presented here.
Production
We would like to thank the many others who played a role in the conception and production of this book: the Curriculum and Learning Experience team at CFA Institute, with special thanks to the Curriculum Directors, past and present, who worked with the authors and reviewers to produce the chapters in this book; the Practice Analysis team at CFA Institute; and the Credentialing Product Marketing team at CFA Institute.
About the CFA Institute Investment Series
CFA Institute is pleased to provide you with the CFA Institute Investment Series, which covers major areas in the field of investments. We provide this best-in-class series for the same reason we have been chartering investment professionals for more than 50 years: to lead the investment profession globally by promoting the highest standards of ethics, education, and professional excellence for the ultimate benefit of society.
The books in the CFA Institute Investment Series contain practical, globally relevant material. They are intended both for those contemplating entry into the extremely competitive field of investment management as well as for those seeking a means of keeping their knowledge fresh and up to date. This series was designed to be user friendly and highly relevant.
We hope you find this series helpful in your efforts to grow your investment knowledge, whether you are a relatively new entrant or an experienced veteran ethically bound to keep up to date in the ever-changing market environment. As a long-term, committed participant in the investment profession and a not-for-profit global membership association, CFA Institute is pleased to provide you with this opportunity.
The Texts
Corporate Finance: A Practical Approach is a solid foundation for those looking to achieve lasting business growth. In today’s competitive business environment, companies must find innovative ways to enable rapid and sustainable growth. This text equips readers with the foundational knowledge and tools for making smart business decisions and formulating strategies to maximize company value. It covers everything from managing relationships between stakeholders to evaluating merger and acquisition bids, as well as the companies behind them. Through extensive use of real-world examples, readers will gain critical perspective into interpreting corporate financial data, evaluating projects, and allocating funds in ways that increase corporate value. Readers will gain insights into the tools and strategies used in modern corporate financial management.
Equity Asset Valuation is a particularly cogent and important resource for anyone involved in estimating the value of securities and understanding security pricing. A well-informed professional knows that the common forms of equity valuation—dividend discount modeling, free cash flow modeling, price/earnings modeling, and residual income modeling—can all be reconciled with one another under certain assumptions. With a deep understanding of the underlying assumptions, the professional investor can better understand what other investors assume when calculating their valuation estimates. This text has a global orientation, including emerging markets.
International Financial Statement Analysis is designed to address the ever-increasing need for investment professionals and students to think about financial statement analysis from a global perspective. The text is a practically oriented introduction to financial statement analysis that is distinguished by its combination of a true international orientation, a structured presentation style, and abundant illustrations and tools covering concepts as they are introduced in the text. The authors cover this discipline comprehensively and with an eye to ensuring the reader’s success at all levels in the complex world of financial statement analysis.
Investments: Principles of Portfolio and Equity Analysis provides an accessible yet rigorous introduction to portfolio and equity analysis. Portfolio planning and portfolio management are presented within a context of up-to-date global coverage of security markets, trading, and market-related concepts and products. The essentials of equity analysis and valuation are explained in detail and profusely illustrated. The book includes coverage of practitioner-important but often neglected topics, such as industry analysis. Throughout, the focus is on the practical application of key concepts with examples drawn from both emerging and developed markets. Each chapter affords the reader many opportunities to self-check his or her understanding of topics.
One of the most prominent texts over the years in the investment management industry has been Maginn and Tuttle’s Managing Investment Portfolios: A Dynamic Process. The third edition updates key concepts from the 1990 second edition. Some of the more experienced members of our community own the prior two editions and will add the third edition to their libraries. Not only does this seminal work take the concepts from the other readings and put them in a portfolio context, but it also updates the concepts of alternative investments, performance presentation standards, portfolio execution, and, very importantly, individual investor portfolio management. Focusing attention away from institutional portfolios and toward the individual investor makes this edition an important and timely work.
The New Wealth Management: The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Managing and Investing Client Assets is an updated version of Harold Evensky’s mainstay reference guide for wealth managers. Harold Evensky, Stephen Horan, and Thomas Robinson have updated the core text of the 1997 first edition and added an abundance of new material to fully reflect today’s investment challenges. The text provides authoritative coverage across the full spectrum of wealth management and serves as a comprehensive guide for financial advisers. The book expertly blends investment theory and real-world applications and is written in the same thorough but highly accessible style as the first edition.
Quantitative Investment Analysis focuses on some key tools that are needed by today’s professional investor. In addition to classic time value of money, discounted cash flow applications, and probability material, there are two aspects that can be of value over traditional thinking. The first involves the chapters dealing with correlation and regression that ultimately figure into the formation of hypotheses for purposes of testing. This gets to a critical skill that challenges many professionals: the ability to distinguish useful information from the overwhelming quantity of available data. Second, the final chapter of Quantitative Investment Analysis covers portfolio concepts and takes the reader beyond the traditional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) type of tools and into the more practical world of multifactor models and arbitrage pricing theory.
All books in the CFA Institute Investment Series are available through all major booksellers. All titles also are available on the Wiley Custom Select platform at http://customselect.wiley.com, where individual chapters for all the books may be mixed and matched to create custom textbooks for the classroom.
Chapter 1 Introduction to Financial Statement Analysis
Elaine Henry, PhD, CFA Thomas R. Robinson, PhD, CFA
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you will be able to do the following:
describe the roles of financial reporting and financial statement analysis;
describe the roles of the statement of financial position, statement of comprehensive income, statement of changes in equity, and statement of cash flows in evaluating a company’s performance and financial position;
describe the importance of financial statement notes and supplementary information—including disclosures of accounting policies, methods, and estimates—and management’s commentary;
describe the objective of audits of financial statements, the types of audit reports, and the importance of effective internal controls;
identify and describe information sources that analysts use in financial statement analysis besides annual financial statements and supplementary information;
describe the steps in the financial statement analysis framework.
1. Introduction
Financial analysis is the process of examining a company’s performance in the context of its industry and economic environment in order to arrive at a decision or recommendation. Often, the decisions and recommendations addressed by financial analysts pertain to providing capital to companies—specifically, whether to invest in the company’s debt or equity securities and at what price. An investor in debt securities is concerned about the company’s ability to pay interest and to repay the principal lent. An investor in equity securities is an owner with a residual interest in the company and is concerned about the company’s ability to pay dividends and the likelihood that its share price will increase.
Overall, a central focus of financial analysis is evaluating the company’s ability to earn a return on its capital that is at least equal to the cost of that capital, to profitably grow its operations, and to generate enough cash to meet obligations and pursue opportunities.
Fundamental financial analysis starts with the information found in a company’s financial reports. These financial reports include audited financial statements, additional disclosures required by regulatory authorities, and any accompanying (unaudited) commentary by management. Basic financial statement analysis—as presented in this chapter—provides a foundation that enables the analyst to better understand other information gathered from research beyond the financial reports.
This chapter is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses the scope of financial statement analysis. Section 3 describes the sources of information used in financial statement analysis, including the primary financial statements (statement of financial position or balance sheet, statement of comprehensive income, statement of changes in equity, and cash flow statement). Section 4 provides a framework for guiding the financial statement analysis process. A summary of the key points concludes the chapter.
2. Roles of Financial Reporting and Financial Statement Analysis
The role of financial statements issued by companies is to provide information about a company’s performance, financial position, and changes in financial position that is useful to a wide range of users in making economic decisions. The role of financial statement analysis is to use financial reports prepared by companies, combined with other information, to evaluate the past, current, and potential performance and financial position of a company for the purpose of making investment, credit, and other economic decisions. Managers within a company perform financial analysis to make operating, investing, and financing decisions but do not necessarily rely on analysis of related financial statements. They have access to additional financial information that can be reported in whatever format is most useful to their decision.
