What Are The Four Basic Types Of Financial Ratios Used For Measure A Company 's Performance?

These ratios will help us see how effective a company is at using their sales or assets and turning this into income.

Many believe that business entities should have an ethical duty to be socially responsible, to work towards increasing its positive effects on society while decreasing its negative effects. Many organizations look for opportunities to be socially responsible while also creating shareholder wealth.

Financial ratios are great indicators to find a firm’s performance and financial situation. Most of the ratios are able to be calculated through the use of financial statements provided by the firm itself. They show the relationship between two or more financial variables that can be used to analyze trends and to compare the firm’s financials with other companies to further come up with market values or discount rates, etc.

2. List the four basic types of financial ratios used to measure a company’s performance, give an example of each type of ratio and explain its significance.

Before beginning an analysis of a company it is necessary to have a complete set of financial statements, preferably for the pas few years so that historical trends can be obtained. Ratios are a way for anyone to get an idea of the financial performance of a company by using the information contained in the financial statements. Ratios are grouped into four basic categories, liquidity, activity, profitability, and financial leverage. This document will use a variety of these ratios to analyze the firm, Sample Company, as of December 31,2000.

How can financial ratios extend your understanding of financial statements? What questions do the time series of ratios in case Exhibit 7 raise? What questions do the ratios on peer firms in case Exhibits 8 and 9 raise?

This paper examines financial ratio analysis by defining, the three groups of stakeholders that use financial ratios, the five different kinds of ratios used and their applications, the analytical tools used in analysis, and finally financial ratio analysis limitations and benefits.

The expectation that businesses behave responsibly and positively contribute to society all while pursuing their economic goals is one that holds firm through all generations. Stakeholders, both market and nonmarket, expect businesses to be socially responsible. Many companies have responded to this by including this growing expectation as part of their overall business operations. There are companies in existence today whose sole purpose is to socially benefit society alongside businesses who simply combine social benefits with their economic goals as their company mission. These changes in societal expectations and thus company purpose we’ve seen in the business community over time often blurs the line of what it means to be socially

According to the authors, ratio analysis is very effective way to measure financial performance of hospitals (Burkhardt & Wheeler, 2013). The authors mentioned about two major types of ratios important in healthcare industry i.e. return on investment and operating profit. Generally financial ratios can be divided in four major categories: liquidity ratios; assets turnover ratios; debt ratios; and profitability ratios. These financial ratios cover all major dimensions of business performance; hence a manager should include these ratios in his report (Cleverley et al., 2011).

In this case the concentration is on “Company Performance Measurement”, using the “Ratios”, ‎before we answer to the question, we have to focus a bit on the “Financial Ratios”‎

The calculation of ratios is the calculation technique for analyzing a company’s financial performance that divides or standardize one accounting measure by another economically relevant measure. Financial ratios can be used as a tool to demonstrate financial statement users for making valid comparisons of firm operating performance, over time for the same firm and between comparable companies. External investors are mostly interested in gaining insights about a firm’s profitability, asset management, liquidity, and solvency.

Financial leverage is the ability of the company to maneuver with financing options to meet the obligations (Investopedia, 2012). There are two leverage ratios that were analyzed for this financial statement 1) debt ratio and 2) debt-to-equity ratio.

Firms and Companies include ‘Ratios’ in their external report to which it can be referred as ‘highlights’. Only with the help of ratios the financial statements are meaningful. It is therefore, not surprising that ratio analysis feature are prominently in the literature on financial management. According to Mcleary (1992) ratio means “an expression of a relationship between any two figures or groups of figures in the financial statements of an undertaking”.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a very controversial topic. A question that has been debated for the past few decades is; is it corporately viable to introduce social responsibility as a proposed addition to the work ethic of business organisations. As well as, if adopting the framework of corporate social responsibility would yield positive improvements for those organisations.

Ratio analysis is a very useful tool when it comes to understanding the performance of the company. It highlights the strengths and the weaknesses of the company and pinpoints to the mangers and their subordinates as to which area of the company requires their attention be it prompt or gradual. The return on shareholder’s fund gives an estimate of the amount of profit available to be shared amongst the ordinary shareholders; where as the return on capital employed measures an organization 's profitability and the productivity with which its capital is utilized. Return on total assets is a profitability ratio that measures the net income created by total assets amid a period.