• Do you need to understand and interpret financial statements?
• You will learn your way around Income Statements, Cash Flows and Balance Sheets.
• You will also gain an insight into operational and financial gearing.
• Case studies will highlight profitability and liquidity ratios that will reveal the health of any company.

After attending, you will have the skills to:

• Understand the key differences between the Income Statement and the Cash flow Statement.

Calculate and interpret the main accounting ratios; there are four main groups of ratios:

1. those which measure profitability;
2. those which measure liquidity;
3. those which measure business efficiency;
4. those which relate to the business’ financial structure.

• Understand the different components of the Balance Sheet.

Identify companies with the following characteristics:

1. A weak or strong Balance Sheet
2. Those that might have potential liquidity or solvency problems
3. Working Capital problems (overtrading)
4. Under-utilisation of assets employed (sweat the assets)
5. Inefficient capital structure (equity vs debt)
6. Business / Financial risk due to excess debt

• The MAGIC FOUR – the financial health of a business can effectively be tracked by using four KEY FINANCIAL MEASURES. By tracking these ratios and implementing strategies to improve them, other performance measures will also improve.