The Analysis of Corporate Financial Data.

The article focuses on issues related to the analysis of corporate financial data. The paper involves an analytical explanation of the causes underlying the increase during the years 1940-1943 in the assets of 150 corporations doing business in Texas. Accounting, when related to corporations, may be thought of generally in terms of the transactions affecting corporate assets, a record of those assets, their changes, sources, and dispositions. From a simple view, the corporate balance sheet may be conceived as a statement arraying on one side the book- keeping values of corporate assets, summarized and classified around common descriptive titles. The other side of the statement arrays the bookkeeping values of the equity interests in those assets. While such equities frequently may also reflect the results of transactions which have represented asset sources, to explain all increases in liabilities as resulting in asset increases requires a lengthy and very precise statement. The accounting concepts of terms used in statements of income and statements of financial condition must be carefully differentiated.