Financial statement analysis

Abstract: List of Cases List of Accounting Clinics 1 Introduction to Investing and Valuation 2 Introduction to the Financial Statements PART ONE: Financial Statements and Valuation 3 How Financial Statements Are Used in Valuation 4 Cash Accounting, Accrual Accounting, and Discounted Cash Flow Variation 5 Accrual Accounting and Valuation: Pricing Book Values 6 Accrual Accounting and Valuation: Pricing Earnings 7 Valuation and Active Investing PART TWO: The Analysis of Financial Statements 8 Viewing the Business Through the Financial Statements 9 The Analysis if the Statement of Shareholders' Equity 10 The Analysis of the Balance Sheet and Income Statement 11 The Analysis of the Cash Flow Statement 12 The Analysis of Profitability 13 The Analysis of Growth and Sustainable Earnings PART THREE: Forecasting and Valuation Analysis 14 The Value of Operations and the Evaluation of Enterprise Price-to-Book Ratios and Price-Earnings Ratios 15 Anchoring on the Financial Statements: Simple Forecasting and Simple Valuation 15 Full-Information Forecasting, Valuation, and Business Strategy Analysis PART FOUR: Accounting Analysis and Valuation 17 Creating Accounting Value and Economics Value 18 Analysis of the Quality of Financial Statements PART FIVE: The Analysis of Risk and Return 19 The Analysis of Equity Risk and Return for Active Investing 20 The Analysis of Credit Risk and Return Appendix A Summary of Formulas Index

Abstract: This paper examines whether a simple accounting-based fundamental analysis strategy, when applied to a broad portfolio of high book-to-market firms, can shift the distribution of returns earned by an investor. I show that the mean return earned by a high book-to-market investor can be increased by at least 7.5% annually through the selection of financially strong high BM firms, while the entire distribution of realized returns is shifted to the right. In addition, an investment strategy that buys expected winners and shorts expected losers generates a 23% annual return between 1976 and 1996, and the strategy appears to be robust across time and to controls for alternative investment strategies. Within the portfolio of high BM firms, the benefits to financial statement analysis are concentrated in small and medium-sized firms, companies with low share turnover, and firms with no analyst following, yet this superior performance is not dependent on purchasing firms with low share prices. A positive relationship between the sign of the initial historical information and both future firm performance and subsequent quarterly earnings announcement reactions suggests that the market initially underreacts to the historical information. In particular, one-sixth of the annual return difference between ex ante strong and weak firms is earned over the four three-day periods surrounding