Financial Statement Analysis Notes, Phases & Types

Financial statement analysis takes into account a company's financial data while making judgments. For both people outside the company, like investors, and those inside, like managers, it is essential. It serves as a means of monitoring finances internally and as a tool for assessing the company's performance and overall health outside. Reading this material will help you better understand the financial statement analysis process for the CA examinations. 

What is financial statement analysis?

A financial statement is similar to a financial report card for a company, revealing its money condition and cash flows. There are different kinds of statements, each with a different purpose. To analyze financial statements is to examine how the figures in the statements relate to one another. 

It informs us about where the company is financially today and in the past and how it's been doing. This examination also assists in making informed speculation regarding what can occur in the future. It's separating the numbers on financial reports to determine what a company does well and where it can do better.

Why is financial statement analysis important?

Financial statement analysis is extremely important for several critical reasons:
It indicates how well the firms are performing and how efficiently the managers manage them.

• Assists in discovering what the business excels at and where it can get better.
• Let's forecast what will happen in the future for the company so that we can determine how to invest in or operate the business.
• Investigate how well the business is handling its daily transactions and whether or not it is generating sufficient finances.
• Assists in identifying what areas of the business's finances matter most.

Process of Financial Statement Analysis 

Financial statement analysis is conducted in three general steps:

Step 1: Clarifying Financial Statements: It is about arranging financial statements so that it is easier to understand and correctly interpret them. For instance:

• Income Statement: Arrange items into recurring and non-recurring ones and segregate earnings into core and one-off.
• Balance Sheet: Divides the balance sheet into operating and financial assets/liabilities.
• Cash Flow Statement: Eliminates financial operations from cash flow related to operations.

Step 2: Correcting Mistakes: This process removes measurement errors, ensuring the data is reliable and accurate. This enhances the quality of the accounting figures reported.

Step 3: Analysis: Once the financials are reconciled, ratios are calculated to assess the company's performance. This involves a comparison of different financial measures to know the company's financial position. 

Financial Statement Analysis Phases 

Financial statement analysis is a phased process that plays an important part in analyzing a company's financial well-being and making well-educated decisions. Now, let us go through every phase in depth:

Phase 1: Establish Purpose of Analysis

Analysts, in this first phase, identify the purpose of the analysis. They identify the most important questions that should be addressed and establish the report's scope. It involves the comprehension of the analysis goals, including determining profitability, liquidity, or solvency. Analysts also refer to institutional guidelines to confirm conformity and collect the appropriate information sources.

Phase 2: Data Gathering

Data collection comes next when the goal has been decided. The analysts use a variety of sources, including industry data, financial records, and manager, customer, and supplier interviews. The company's operations, market trends, and future expectations are all revealed via the interviews. After being categorized, the collected data is used to create financial statements, tables, and analysis questionnaires. 

Phase 3: Data Processing 

After the data collection, analysts move to the processing phase. Here, statistical and financial analysis methods are used to obtain significant insights. It can include constructing common-size statements to compare comparative financial information in the past or between companies, normalizing financial statements to account for irregularities, making historical trend-based forecasts, computing financial ratios to analyze performance, and constructing visual data like graphs to facilitate understanding.

Phase 4: Interpretation of Data

Once the data has been processed, the analysts make conclusions based on interpreting the findings. The analysts look at trends, relationships, and anomalies revealed by the analysis. This step is about bringing the findings together into a logical story and conveying them clearly and understandably. Interpretation also means identifying possible risks and opportunities from the analysis.

Phase 5: Conclusion and Recommendations

Analysts, in this phase, give conclusions based on their interpretation of the data. They draw out the principal findings of the analysis and make recommendations for action. The recommendations could be based on investment decisions, credit ratings, strategic alterations, or operation refinements. Analysts also synchronize their conclusions with institutional guidelines for consistency and appropriateness.

Phase 6: Follow-Up

The last phase is follow-up to maintain the timeliness and validity of the analysis in the long term. Analysts track changes in the financial position of the company, market conditions, regulatory landscape, and other related factors. The continuous tracking maintains recommendations as current and actionable. Moreover, analysts can revise their reports and recommendations as new information emerges, providing stakeholders with the latest insights.

Types of Financial Statement Analysis 

Financial analysts are important in analyzing the financial position of a company. They begin by reviewing the income statement, beginning with income analysis.

1. Income Statement Analysis:

The income statement is analyzed in two primary manners: vertical and horizontal analysis.

• Vertical Analysis: With this method, each line item on the income statement is compared to the revenue proportion. Depreciation, taxes, interest, net income, earnings before tax (EBT), gross profit, cost of goods sold (COGS), and selling general, and administrative (SG&A) expenditures are just a few of the measures that analysts consider.
• Horizontal Analysis: Here, the analysts are comparing period-to-period changes in each of the line items on the income statement. They are determining the percentage change from one period to the next so that they can measure the growth or the reduction in performance over time.

2. Cash Flow Statement Analysis:

Cash flow statement analysis is done to understand the inflow and outflow of cash in the company during a given period. It includes cash from operating activities, investing activities, and financing activities, giving insights into the management of the company's cash flow.

3. Pyramid of Ratio Analysis:

Financial analysts employ a pyramid of ratios to analyze factors of efficiency, profitability, and leverage influencing a company. The analysis involves DuPont analysis, return on equity ratio (ROE), rates of return and profitability analysis, and efficiency and leverage ratios.

4. Balance Sheet Analysis:

Through the analysis of the balance sheet, analysts can measure the operational efficiency of a company. They contrast income statement items with the assets of the company to measure revenue generation and inventory management effectiveness through different financial ratios.

Summary 

Financial Statement Analysis Notes offer a complete framework for analyzing the financial performance of a company. The notes address important concepts, tools, and techniques for financial statement analysis, such as ratio analysis, trend analysis, and cash flow analysis. Using these concepts, investors and analysts can make informed decisions and evaluate the financial health of a company.