An Introduction To Financial Statements

March 16, 2014 1 Comment

Financial statements are among the most important sections of a company’s annual report. For a novice investor, reading and understanding a company’s financial statements is quite intimidating at first sight. However, to study and make good investing decisions, it is necessary to understand them.

Profit & Loss account: The profit and loss account (P&L) shows a company’s performance over a specific time frame, usually a financial year or a period of 12 months. In India, most companies follow a April to March financial year . The P&L account is also known as the income statement. It presents information relating to a company’s revenues, manufacturing costs, sales and general expenses, interest and depreciation charges, tax costs, other income, net profits, and dividends.

For a typical P&L statement refer to the image below:

20% Fall History

July 23, 2013 Leave a comment

wealthymatters In 2008, when Lehman Brothers imploded on September 15, the Rupee, which had by then slipped a bit from its sub-39 all-time high to around 41, fell sharply and by the time the music really stopped, about 3 or 4 months in, to over 50 to the dollar, a decline of 20%.

In August 2011, when the US debt downgrade followed by the exploding of the European sovereign debt crisis (courtesy Greece) hit emerging markets like a bomb,the Rupee, which had been hovering between 44 and 46 for several months – during which, incidentally, both exports and imports were growing like gangbusters – collapsed in a near-straight line, triggering RBI action on December 15, tightening rules and squeezing liquidity. When the dust had cleared – or so it seemed – the rupee had lost over 20% and there was blood all over corporate balance sheets (and, of course, profit and loss statements). The banking system is still recovering from this.

This time round,the fall so far is just half of that in the previous two cases.

Filed under Alternative Assets, Paper Assets, Tool Kit Tagged with balance sheet, European sovereign debt crisis, fall in rupee, falling rupee, Lehman Brothers, postaday, profit and loss statement, rupee depreciation, US debt downgrade

Anita On MBAs In Entrepreneurship

January 31, 2013 2 Comments

wealthymatters.com “I often get asked to talk about entrepreneurship – even by hallowed institutions like Harvard and Stanford – but I’m not all convinced it is a subject you can teach.How do you teach obsession, because more often than not it’s obsessions that drives an entrepreneur’s vision? Why would you march to a different drumbeat if you are instinctively part of the crowd?

If I had learned more about business ahead of time, I would have been shaped into believing that it was only about finances and quality management. There is a sort of terrorism that comes with the operations and the science of making money, but by not knowing any of that, I had an amazing freedom.In the business school model, entrepreneurs are most at home with a balance sheet, a cash-flow forecast and a business plan. They dream of profit forecasts and the day they can take the company public. You certainly must be able to wield these weapons. But these are just part of the toolbox of re-imagining the world. They are not the basic defining characteristic of entrepreneurship. Read more of this post

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Tool Kit Tagged with Anita Roddick Quote, balance sheet, Body Shop, business acumen, business experience, business plan, cash flow forecast, creativity, entrepreneurship as survival, finance, Harvard, livelihood, march to a different drumbeat, MBA, MBA in Entrepreneurship, postaday, quality management, Stanford, taking your company public, teaching entrepreneurship, training

Alok Kejriwal On The Different Shades Of Money.

August 1, 2012 2 Comments

wealthymatters.com

Some interesting observations from Alok Kejriwal :

“After my first round of VC funding, I ran into my uncle at a dinner. He had read about the financing in media and cornered me. ‘So you’re rich! Why are you looking so gloomy?’ he said. ‘Huh’ I asked? ‘My Company’s the one that got funded, not me! No one got rich. The VCs got poorer and a long arduous road lies ahead of me to return the money to the VCs many times over’. He chuckled and said’ ‘What nonsense! The first rule of the funding game is to siphon out 25% of the funds and make yourself-rich. Investors can be dealt with later’. Shucks… hadn’t I heard that story before? Many of my relatives have floated public issues that were nothing short of scams and they still boast about it!

This ‘get rich, siphon out’ philosophy left so many old industrial houses bankrupt. They were never capitalized to take advantage of acquisition opportunities and punished their shareholders so harshly that they could never raise capital again. Think Mafatlal, Dalmia and many more. Even today I meet embarrassed professional managers working in ‘family’ firms who get paid salaries in ‘half white and half black’ to avoid taxes! Read more of this post

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Paper Assets Tagged with Alok Kejriwal, Bajaj, balance sheet, black money, cash war chest, Corus, Dalmia, empire, family firms, Fiat India, Hindustan Motors, Income Tax rate, Indira Gandhi emergency tax regime, investors, IPO scams, Jaguar and Land Rover, Mafatlal, massive cash reserves, Mittals, Nano, postaday, professional managers, punishing shareholders, raising money, Ruias, siphoning off money, Tata, TCS, Telco, TISCO, VC, VC funding, venture capitalist, white money

Alok Kejriwal On Marwari Business Traits

July 30, 2012 4 Comments

The Marwaris are so successful at business,so it makes sense to learn from them.In the article below Alok Kejriwal of contests2win.com writes about what he learnt from his family business.

The Seven Subjects I learnt at Marwari Business School (MBS)

On the last day of my ICSE exam (10^th standard finals), my Nani (Grand mother) offered me a free seat into the Marwari Business School. I was 16 and I had the opportunity to go and sit in my Nana’s (Grand father) office.

I took up the offer.

These are the seven subjects I learnt:

M = Monetization Mentality

Monetization above everything else!

For Marwari’s, money pretty much means everything. It’s the ‘currency’ of success – pun intended. People are sized and measured not by their waist sizes but by the width of their balance sheet. A Marwari’s religion is making money and they meditate on it.

What Monetization and its terms means is also unique for Marwari’s.

For instance, I learnt that Revenue was not what you ‘bill’ or ‘pass-thru’ or ‘recognize’. Revenue was always what you ‘net-net’ earned that came in your coffers.

Revenue is bottom line for a Marwari – not top line. Read more of this post