Novice Investing - Dissecting Income Statement

Date: Monday 01st 2008f December 2008 05:32:23 PM

Dissecting Income Statement - 10/10/2005

By: Hari Wibowo

Knowing income statement real well is critical to your investing success. Income Statement is crucial in determining the fair value of a common stock. Why? Because I believe that the fair value of any investment is determined by the return it can generate for a given price. If a common stock is trading at $ 100 and it earns $ 4 annually, then it is yielding 4%. If a treasury bond is yielding 5% right now, who would want to buy a common stock which yields only 4%? To be honest, there are probably some investors out there who will buy stocks at any price. However, this type of investing is seldom profitable.

Analyzing income statement will tell us how much profits a company can earn. This will in turn tell us how much percentage return we can expect. So, without further ado, let us go through the components of a typical income statement.

Revenue. Also called sales, Revenue is the lifeblood of a company. To earn revenue, a company has to sell. For retail companies like Walmart, you have to sell items at the stores. For service companies such as H&R Block, it has to sell its expertise to tax filers.

Cost of Revenue. Sometimes called Cost of Good Sold, Cost Revenue is the direct cost of providing a particular good or service to customers. For example, the cost of selling one can of soda at Walmart is the price it bought the soda from manufacturers.

Gross Profit This is the difference between the price of good or service that a firm sells and the cost of providing that particular good or service. In other words, it is the mark up that a firm impose on its customers. For example, if Walmart sells a can of soda for $ 1.00 while it costs $ 0.60 from the manufacturer, then gross profit of Walmart for selling that can of soda is $ 0.40. When gross profit is expressed in term of percentage, it is called gross profit margin. In this case, gross profit margin of Walmart is ($0.40/ $ 1.00) x 100% = 40%.

Research & Development. This is the cost of doing research in order to provide future revenue or cost improvement. Either way, it is designed to boost the firm's future profit. For example, Walmart may spend certain dollars in order to improve its inventory management, which in turn will reduce cost of operating its business.

Selling General & Administrative. This is a really broad category. Basically, this is the fixed cost of doing business. Marketing expense, office rent, manager and the CEO's salary is included here. So do depreciation and amortization expense. For your information, depreciation expense is the expense incurred every year for buying a long-term assets such as machinery or vehicle. Amortization expense is the expense incurred for obtaining goodwill, which is obtained from acquiring companies above its net asset value. When a company is considering layoffs, it is this cost that they are trying to reduce.

Disclaimer: The sole purpose of this article is educational. This article is merely the opinion of the writer and is not in any way a buy/sell recommendation regarding Anheuser WalMart Stores Inc. (WMT) or other securities.

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