Have you ever had a set of financial statements dropped in your desk you go to pick up the thick pitcher list document begin reading, but 10 minutes later, you're overwhelmed by the detail, the terminology and the horrible boilerplate legal ease. An hour later, you're still scratching your head trying to figure out what it all means. In this course, we're going to learn about how to read a financial statement and perform financial analysis. My name is Blair cook and I will be your financial learning facilitator today. This is obviously an important skill for financial and non financial professionals alike. However, it has been my experience that many folks outside of finance just don't get it.

And many finance folks rarely get or take the opportunity to sit back and appreciate what the numbers are saying. I call this skill financial literacy. It's an ability to pick up a set of financial statements and almost instantly find the information of most relevance and to translate the knowledge numbers into an overall assessment of the company. financial analysis answers important questions about a company's performance, liquidity position, financial risk strengths and weaknesses, productivity returns, value statements life cycle, cash generation potential and its ability to continue as a going concern. pretty important stuff Wouldn't you agree? You bet it is.

Whether you're a manager, an executive or an investor, this stuff matters. This stuff determines such things as the company's relative position in the industry. The size of the performance bonus, it'll pay out the ability to pay or raise dividends, the ability to raise and attract capital, the ability to grow the company organically or through mergers and acquisitions, or conversely, the exposure to a takeover. These are important stories, financial statements tell. Unfortunately, these stories get lost in the gobs of information they get prepared and circulate So in this course we are bravely going to tackle it all and leave no stone unturned. By the time you have completed this course, you should be able to analyze the company's financials like a pro.

Let's start with where you get financial information. In the United States, all publicly listed companies must file their quarterly and annual results on Edgar these filings can be retrieved directly from the SEC website. In Canada, you can retrieve publicly filed financial information from Cedar You can also visit the company's websites as this information is often posted under the investors relations section. And lastly, you can visit any one of a bazillion financial websites to track this information. Bloomberg Morningstar, Yahoo, Google, MSN all have financial sections. Now the advantages of using a financial website are that they already have calculated many of the financial ratios that we will discuss in this course.

They also provide direct links to the filings and put the financial information in a summarized format right in front of you. They also enable easier comparisons with the company's peers many investment websites track analyst estimates which gives you another data point and some forward looking guidance as to what to expect. Now there's a few disadvantages of using investment websites, including they don't contain the same depth of discussion other results that you would find in the actual filing. If your company is private, then coverage in either government filings or investment websites is not an option. It simply doesn't exist. Most investment websites don't track all the important non financial information that is often disclosed in the actual filings.

For example, information about contingencies and guarantees maturity profiles, and unfunded pension obligations and related party transactions. For our purposes, we're going to start with looking at the raw financial statements as they are presented in the regulatory filings in our final lesson we will use an example of an investment website just to give you a sense of what is out there and freely available to help you in your analytical quest. So when you are ready, go to the next lesson and dig in. And remember, don't stop to get to the top and get to the top. Don't stop