Sunday, 23 November 2014

Chapter 3 - Key Concepts & Questions


As I have mentioned before, I have studied previous accounting subjects and have came across a lot of what was included in this chapter already.  I look at financial statements on a daily basis for my job. I have also had to complete a set of financial statement for a subject complete earlier in my degree so I believe I am familiar with the Balance Sheet and Income Statement and Statement of Change in Equity. When I saw we would be looking at the fourth financial statement, The Cash Flow Statement I was quite interested in this. I have minimal work on cash flow statements, I was aware it measured the cash you already had at a date plus  the businesses inflows and outflows of cash, but have never really had to complete a detailed cash flow statement or analyse a detailed cash flow statement before. I am excited to learn more about this report through the term.

Ratios are another concept I am exciting about learning more about. I have done some ratio work before, in high school using basic financials, nowhere near as detailed and complex as financials like PTB Group Limited. I was also aware that ratios result are compared to other organisations in the same industry and against the industries average, and I am very excited in looking more into PTB Group Limited ratios so see how well this organisation is actually doing compared to the industry average. I loved how the chapter has explained the history of how the ratio concept was developed, it made it an interesting read.

I found the Dividends section of chapter 3 very difficult to read. I have to re-read this section two or three times to fully wrap my head around what it was trying to tell me. The cash flow was interesting to me and I liked the way it explained the relationship between the dividends and cash flow.

Dividends – Operating cash flow – Capital outlays + Net cash flow from owners

Immediately after reading this, I skipped straight to the explanation about capital outlays because I wasn’t aware of what this was. Operating cash flow and net cash flow from owners I could make my own assumptions as to how these items might be defined. From reading what capital outlays actually means I have learnt that it is the cash invested into the operating assets of a firm, the cash that has been invested in the assets that actually generate the products or services for sale.

The term cash flow is often used to refer to a number of different things. I did not know this at all, I just assumed that it was the physical cash of an organisation plus the future cash outlays and inflows. I did not know that there was FCF Cash Flow and EBITDA. Free Cash Flow is cash generated by a business after allowing for on-going capital investments, after reading this I thought about this for a while and it makes so much sense to include this.

A question I am left wondering after reading chapter 3 and spending most of my time looking at the dividends and cash flow sections of this chapter is why Ryman Health Care borrowed money from the bank to pay out a dividend to its shareholder? Why would they do this? I did not know that companies did this for their shareholders. I have seen from working in an accounting firm that some companies just do not pay out a dividend in some years, so this is why I am questioning why they would have borrowed money to help fund a dividend to shareholders.

Overall, chapter 3 was a revision of what I have already learnt except for the topics discussed above.

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