The correct order of presentation in a classified balance sheet

A Further Look at Financial Statements

 CHAPTER PREVIEW 

If you are thinking of purchasing Best Buy stock, or any stock, how can you decide what the shares are worth? If you manage Columbia Sportswear's credit department, how should you determine whether to extend credit to a new customer? If you are a financial executive at Google, how do you decide whether your company is generating adequate cash to expand operations without borrowing? Your decision in each of these situations will be influenced by a variety of considerations. One of them should be your careful analysis of a company's financial statements. The reason: Financial statements offer relevant and reliable information, which will help you in your decision‐making.

In this chapter, we take a closer look at the balance sheet and introduce some useful ways for evaluating the information provided by the financial statements. We also examine the financial reporting concepts underlying the financial statements. We begin by introducing the classified balance sheet.

Just Fooling Around?

Few people could have predicted how dramatically the Internet would change the investment world. One of the most interesting results is how it has changed the way ordinary people invest their savings. More and more people are striking out on their own, making their own investment decisions.

Two early pioneers in providing investment information to the masses were Tom and David Gardner, brothers who created an online investor website called The Motley Fool. The name comes from Shakespeare's As You Like It. The fool in Shakespeare's play was the only one who could speak unpleasant truths to kings and queens without being killed. Tom and David view themselves as 21st‐century “fools,” revealing the “truths” of the stock market to the small investor, who they feel has been taken advantage of by Wall Street insiders. The Motley Fool's online bulletin board enables investors to exchange information and insights about companies.

Critics of these bulletin boards contend that they are simply high‐tech rumor mills that cause investors to bid up stock prices to unreasonable levels. For example, the stock of PairGain Technologies jumped 32% in a single day as a result of a bogus takeover rumor on an investment bulletin board. Some observers are concerned that small investors—ironically, the very people the Gardner brothers are trying to help—will be hurt the most by misinformation and intentional scams.

To show how these bulletin boards work, suppose that you had $10,000 to invest. You were considering Best Buy Company, the largest seller of electronics equipment in the United States. You scanned the Internet investment bulletin boards and found messages posted by two different investors. Here are excerpts from actual postings:

TMPVenus: “Where are the prospects for positive movement for this company? Poor margins, poor management, astronomical P/E!”

broachman: “I believe that this is a LONG TERM winner, and presently at a good price.”

One says sell, and one says buy. Whom should you believe? If you had taken “broachman's” advice and purchased the stock, the $10,000 you invested would have been worth over $300,000 five years later. Best Buy was one of America's best‐performing stocks during that period of time.

Rather than getting swept away by rumors, investors must sort out the good information from the bad. One thing is certain—as information services such as The Motley Fool increase in number, gathering information will become even easier. Evaluating it will be the harder task.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE 1

Identify the sections of a classified balance sheet.

In Chapter 1 , you learned that a balance sheet presents a snapshot of a company's financial position at a point in time. It lists individual asset, liability, and stockholders' equity items. However, to improve users' understanding of a company's financial position, companies often use a classified balance sheet instead. A classified balance sheet groups together similar assets and similar liabilities, using a number of standard classifications and sections. This is useful because items within a group have similar economic characteristics. A classified balance sheet generally contains the standard classifications listed in Illustration 2-1 .

Assets

Liabilities and Stockholders' Equity

Current assets

      Current liabilities

Long-term investments

      Long-term liabilities

Property, plant, and equipment

      Stockholders' equity

Intangible assets

ILLUSTRATION 2-1 Standard balance sheet classifications

These groupings help financial statement readers determine such things as (1) whether the company has enough assets to pay its debts as they come due, and (2) the claims of short‐ and long‐term creditors on the company's total assets. Many of these groupings can be seen in the balance sheet of Franklin Corporation shown in Illustration 2-2 . In the sections that follow, we explain each of these groupings.