The Fundamentals of Financial Statement Analysis as Applied to the Coca-Cola Company

Book excerpt: Recent stock market crises are exacerbated by investors who don’t understand what has been happening to companies because investors lack an understanding of financial ratio analysis. Stock markets are efficient in that they incorporate, and even anticipate, information about companies based on financial accounting data provided by companies. However, market efficiency results from extensive analysis performed by financial analysts. Much of this financial analysis is based on the analysis of financial information provided by companies and analyzed using financial ratio analysis. This book provides a step-by-step demonstration of how to download data from Internet sources, transfer the data to a spreadsheet, and conduct a financial ratio analysis of any company. The book outlines the steps needed to perform a financial ratio analysis, the financial statements to be retrieved from EDGAR, and the five categories of financial ratios used in the financial analysis of the company. The data retrieved from the financial statements is copied to a worksheet and used to compute and graph the financial ratios. The ratios and graphs are used to determine the performance drivers of this company.