What are Annual Reports?
Annual reports are a document that public corporations must provide annually to shareholders that describes their operations and financial conditions. The front part of the report often contains an impressive combination of graphics, photos, and an accompanying narrative, all of which chronicle the company’s activities over the past year and may also make forecasts about the future of the company. The back part of the report contains detailed financial and operational information.
Listed companies are bound by duty to provide all necessary information to stakeholders through annual reports, in order to let investors understand companies’ performance. Some stock exchanges have dedicated formats and requirements while others have broad guidelines.
Reporting requirements in Annual Reports, however, includes a minimum of
– Companies product information, competitors, market risks, and road strategies
– Management report explaining key aspects of companies performance (management, however, may not report all issues and materiality definition is vague)
– Audited financial statements.
Annual reports are quite large documents with a full load of information. Investors and stakeholders can not trust all information and disclosure prima facie. hence they need to understand the structure of annual reports, what section contains what kind of information.
Typically, an annual report will contain the following sections:
- General corporate information
- Operating and financial highlights
- Letter to the shareholders from the CEO
- Narrative text, graphics, and photos
- Management’s discussion and analysis (MD&A)
- Financial statements, including the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement
- Notes to the financial statements
- Auditor’s report
- Summary of financial data
- Accounting policies
Users need a logical approach in getting around with the annual report, in this course, we will teach you that approach with practical example and follow along the process.
We used APPLE inc as a case study and South West airlines as an example.
What you will learn in this course to understand annual reports?
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structure of annual reports
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stock exchange regulatory requirements
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how to read annual reports
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how to analyze annual reports
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what information is found and what is usually missing from reports and where to find missing information
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using analysis techniques to understand what the company is hiding
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financial statement analysis of APPLE and Southwest airlines
Author of this course is Mr Manish Gupta, a passionate hotelier and finance expert
Other courses taught by Mr Manish are
Analyze Hotel Financial Statements steps you must learn for Rooms Dept
Learn how to analyse and maximize Restaurant Profitability
learn how to Analyze Hotel Financial Statements to improve profitability in 2021
Fundamentals of Hotel Revenue Management you must master in 2021
Fundamentals of Annual Reports
Steps in Analyzing Annual Reports
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