Horizontal and vertical analysis in accounting

WAL-MART ANALYSIS

Horizontal analysis (also known as trend analysis) is a financial statement analysis technique that shows changes in the amounts of corresponding financial statement items over a period of time. It is a useful tool to evaluate the trend situations.

The statements for two or more periods are used in horizontal analysis. The earliest period is usually used as the base period and the items on the statements for all later periods are compared with items on the statements of the base period. The changes are generally shown both in dollars and percentage.

Dollar and percentage changes are computed by using the following formulas:

Horizontal analysis may be conducted for balance sheet, income statement, schedules of current and fixed assets and statement of retained earnings.

Example:

An example of the horizontal analysis of balance sheet, schedule of current assets , income statement and statement of retained earnings is given below:

Comparative balance sheet with horizontal analysis:

Comparative schedule of current assets:

Comparative income statement with horizontal analysis:

Comparative retained earnings statement with horizontal analysis:

In above analysis, 2007 is the base year and 2008 is the comparison year. All items on the balance sheet and income statement for the year 2008 have been compared with the items of balance sheet and income statement for the year 2007.

The actual changes in items are compared with the expected changes. For example, if management expects a 30% increase in sales revenue but actual increase is only 10%, it needs to be investigated.

Vertical analysis (also known as common-size analysis) is a popular method of financial statement analysis that shows each item on a statement as a percentage of a base figure within the statement.

To conduct a vertical analysis of balance sheet, the total of assets and the total of liabilities and stockholders’ equity are generally used as base figures. All individual assets (or groups of assets if condensed form balance sheet is used) are shown as a percentage of total assets. The current liabilities, long term debts and equities are shown as a percentage of the total liabilities and stockholders’ equity.

To conduct a vertical analysis of income statement , sales figure is generally used as the base and all other components of income statement like cost of sales, gross profit, operating expenses, income tax, and net income etc. are shown as a percentage of sales.

In a vertical analysis the percentage is computed by using the following formula:

A basic vertical analysis needs an individual statement for a reporting period but comparative statements may be prepared to increase the usefulness of the analysis.

Example:

An example of the vertical analysis of balance sheet and income statement is given below:

Comparative balance sheet with vertical analysis:

Current assets:

2008: (550,000 / 1,139,500) × 100 = 48.3%
2007: (530,000 / 1,230,500) × 100 = 43.3%

Comparative income statement with vertical analysis:

Cost of goods sold:

2008: (1,043,000/1,498,000) × 100 = 69.6%
2007: (820,000/1200,000) × 100 = 68.3%

Vertical analysis states financial statements in a comparable common-size format (percentage form). One of the advantages of common-size analysis is that it can be used for inter-company comparison of enterprises with different sizes because all items are expressed as a percentage of some common number. For example, suppose company A and company B belong to same industry. A is a small company and B is a large company. Company A’s sales and gross profit are $100,000 and $30,000 respectively whereas company B’s sales and gross profit are $1,000,000 and $300,000 respectively. If vertical analysis is conducted and sales figure is used as base, it would show a gross profit percentage of 30% for both the companies as shown below:

Company A and B

Comparative Income Statement

For the year ended…….

Company A

Company B

Sales

100,000

100%

1,000,000

100%

Cost of goods sold

70,000

70%

700,000

70%

———

———–

30,000

30%

300,000

30%

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