How To Assess the Financial Health of a Company

To check the financial health of a business, you need to evaluate its financial performance, liquidity, solvency, profitability, and other key financial indicators. Below are some of the key areas to focus on when assessing the financial health of your business.

  1. Financial Statements

The first step in evaluating the financial health of your business is to review your financial statements. The financial statements include the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement. These statements provide a summary of your business’s financial activity and performance over a specific period.

  • Balance Sheet: The balance sheet provides an overview of your business’s financial position at a specific point in time.
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Predicting Financial Distress and Corporate Failure

The financial failure of a company can have a devastating effect on all seven users of financial statements e.g. present and potential investors, customers, creditors, employees, lenders, the general public, etc. As a result, users of financial statements as indicated previously are interested in predicting not only whether a company will fail, but also when it will fail e.g. to avoid high profile corporate failures at Enron, Arthur Anderson, and WorldCom, etc. Users of financial statements can predict the financial position of an organization using the Altman Z score model, Argenti A score model, and by looking at the financial statements i.e.… Read the rest

Impact of Financial Management Practices on Organizational Performance

Financial Management is the deliberate management of planning and organizing of financial activities. It applies the basic management principle to control the flow of funds and properly utilizes financial resources. It sets the financial goals by properly analyzing the available data. The common methods to carry out financial activities like accounting and budgeting are considered to be the financial management practice. Financial management practices is the discipline dealing with the financial decisions for long and short-term goals to ensure the return on capital exceeds the cost without taking an excessive financial risk. It clarifies the efficient financial management practices and is used in the business to respond to another business environment.… Read the rest

Earnings Management Practices and Techniques

What are earnings and what is earnings management? Simply stated, earnings are the accounting profits of a company. Stakeholders (current or potential providers of debt and equity capital, employees, suppliers, customers, auditors, analysts, rating agencies, and regulators) use earnings to make important financial decisions. Many investors view earnings as value relevant data that is more informative than cash flow data. Others have suggested that current earnings are better predictors of future cash flows than are current cash flows. In the US, these profits are derived using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) – a system based on the accrual method, which measures the performance and position of a company by recognizing economic events regardless of when cash transactions occur.… Read the rest

Prospect Theory in Behavioral Finance

The Prospect Theory was originally conceived by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) and later resulted in Daniel Kahneman being awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. The work by the authors is considered as path breaking in behavioral finance. They introduced the concept of prospect theory for the analysis of decision making under risk. This theory is considered to be seminal in the literature of behavioral finance. It was developed as an alternative model for expected utility theory. It throws light on how individual evaluate gain or losses. The prospect theory has three key aspects.

  1. People sometimes exhibit risk aversion and sometimes risk loving behaviors depending on the nature of the prospect.
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Altman Z-Score Formula – Corporate Bankruptcy Prediction Model

The financial failure of a company can have a devastating effect on the all seven users of financial statements e.g. present and potential investors, customers, creditors, employees, lenders, general public etc. As a result, users of financial statements as indicated previously are interested in predicting not only whether a company will fail, but also when it will fail e.g. to avoid high profile corporate failures at Enron, Arthur Anderson, and WorldCom etc. Business failure is defined as the unfortunate circumstance of a firm’s inability to stay in the business. Business failure occurs when the total liabilities exceeds the total assets of a company, as total assets is consider a measure of productivity of a company assets.  … Read the rest