Dig Deeper: Ratios and Red Flags in Financial Statements: Self-guided training
Photo by flickr user tuchodi
The free workshop, “Dig Deeper: Ratios and Red Flags in Financial Statements,” took place Sept. 27, 2012.
If you’ve been covering public companies for a while, you’ve probably written your share of stories about earnings and sales growth. And you’ve skimmed a myriad of SEC filings, hoping you haven’t missed some juicy story.
These sessions will give you new tools to analyze companies’ financial statements and the SEC filings known as the 10-K and 10-Q. You’ll be able to dig deeper, analyze cash flow, utilize ratios and identify red flags. In short, you’ll be able to come up with more enterprising stories on the companies you cover.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
- How to analyze cash flow
- How to use ratios to monitor the financial health of the companies you cover
- At least four red flags in Form 10-Qs that can result in good stories
- At least four red flags in Form 10-Ks that can result in good stories
YOUR INSTRUCTORS
Named chief of client relations for Bloomberg News earlier this year, Tom Contiliano has reported directly to Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief since 2008 on financial and operational matters. He speaks internally and externally on global accounting topics and has appeared regularly on Bloomberg Television.
Michelle Leder launched Footnoted.com (originally Footnoted.org) in 2003 to take “a closer look at the things that companies try to bury in their routine SEC filings,” according to the website. Its launch coincided with the release of her book, Financial Fine Print: Uncovering a Company’s True Value. Morningstar bought the site in 2010, but Leder bought it back in 2012.
SELF-GUIDED LESSON
Check out the resources below. At your own pace, you can walk through the self-guided lesson on tips for digging deeper into SEC filings.
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Session recordings
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Additional resources
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PowerPoint presentation
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Instructor
Prior to joining Bloomberg in 1999, Tom Contiliano worked for Coopers & Lybrand – and its successor PricewaterhouseCoopers – in the firm’s forensic accounting and audit practices. Trained as a CPA (inactive), he holds a bachelor's in commerce and a master's in accounting from the University of Virginia, where he also taught accounting.
A longtime presenter for the Reynolds Center, Michelle Leder spent 10 years as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers in Florida, Connecticut and New York before launching a freelance career and the Footnoted website. She holds a degree in economics from Brandeis University.
If you ever have the chance to take a seminar with Bloomberg’s Tom Contiliano or Michelle Leder of Footnoted, run to sign up. Anybody who can make reading a company’s 10k seem like an Easter egg hunt knows what he or she is talking about. You have to dig into 10k’s but those speakers provide made the payoff delish.
Great advice! Here are a couple more tips from Tom and Michelle.
The skinny on data ratios (Contiliano) Data Ratios
"Covering the Green Economy – A Western Perspective (Contiliano) Western Perspective
Hiding in Plain Sight: Diving Deeply into SEC Filings (Leder) Diving Deeply