Assignment 2: Submission—Course Project

Financial Statements

There are four primary financial statements used to give the interested parties an overview of the company performances. The four basic financial statements include the following;

Income statement: This report presents the expenses, revenues, profit/losses made by a company.

Balance Sheet: gives the liabilities, owners’ equity and assets of a company. The format is supposed to give the total assets and the total liabilities (Britton & Waterston, 2013). This is the second most important tool that gives information about the liquidity of a company. It also gives more information about capitalization of a company.

Statement of cash flows: this document gives the cash outflows and inflows that have been reported during different periods. The document gives a very useful comparison to an income statement.

Statement of retained earnings: Gives the changes in equity during the reporting period. Different companies have different report format and are the least used financial statements (Rasmussen et al., 2003). 

The following shows various summary of financial statements.

Symbol Last Sale* Change / Net % Share Volume

VelocityShares $ 9.94 0.87 ▲ 6.98% 40,657,235

PowerShares $ 247.43 0.57 ▼ 0.78% 39,895,435

Micron Technology, Inc $ 40.06 0.24 ▼ 1.33% 30,648,561

Sirius XM Holdings Inc. $ 5.06 0.66 ▼ 2.82% 28,677,388

Comcast Corporation $ 37.83 0.83 ▲ 0.80% 24,923,117

From the summary, it is possible to evaluate the company performance over the years and whether each company has recorded a profit or loss during each period. Financial statements are therefore essential tools, which can be used by directors, or various people interested in the company such as the prospective investors (Meigs et al., 2002).

References

Britton, A., & Waterston, C. (2013). Financial accounting. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.

Meigs, R., Mallouk, B., Lam, W., & Meigs, W. (2002). Financial accounting. Whitby, Ont.: McGraw Hill Ryerson.

Rasmussen, N., Eichorn, C., Barak, C., & Prince, T. (2003). Process Improvement for Effective Budgeting and Financial Reporting. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Van Riper, R. (2009). Setting standards for financial reporting. Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books.