preview

Explain How A Company Is Performing Based On Financial Statements

Decent Essays

How A Company is Performing Based on Financial Statements In business it is paramount to know how you are performing. But it’s also extremely important to know how your competitors are doing too. And what about lenders, investors, analysts, and stockholders? The question is how can all of these interested parties be able to look at a business’s health without having a ton of different documents in front of them?
Financial Statements
The answer to the question above are the financial statements that a company has produced can give you a great deal of insight into its health. The income statement, balance sheet including the owners’ equity section, and the statement of cash flows can be very useful. Below we will talk about the purpose of each and a little about what interested parties can do with the information they contain.
Income Statement The first financial statement that one may turn to in order to figure out whether a company is healthy or not may be the income statement. The income statement can tell you whether a certain firm has been profitable, or not, over the specific time frame of the statement. It shows the revenues (or sales) minus expenses such as what it cost to manufacture the goods, marketing/sales/admin expenses, depreciation, income taxes, and even interest paid. A great place to start for a firms financial health would be whether it’s been profitable.
Balance Sheet The next financial statement that can be used to analyze a company is the

Get Access