■ Fundamental Analysis:

Fundamental analysis is a technique that attempts to determine a security’s value by focusing on underlying factors that affect a company's actual business and its future prospects. On a broader scope, you can perform fundamental analysis on industries or the economy as a whole. The term simply refers to the analysis of the economic well-being of a financial entity as opposed to only its price movements

Fundamental analysis serves to answer questions, such as:

• Is the company’s revenue growing?
• Is it actually making a profit?
• Is it in a strong-enough position to beat out its competitors in the future?
• Is it able to repay its debts?
• Is management trying to "cook the books"?

The term fundamental analysis is used most often in the context of stocks, but we can perform fundamental analysis on any security, from a bond to a derivative. As long as we look at the economic fundamentals, we are doing fundamental analysis. For the purpose of this tutorial, fundamental analysis always is referred to in the context of stocks.

Intrinsic Value of Fundamental Analysis:

Intrinsic value is one of the primary assumptions of fundamental analysis is that the price on the stock market does not fully reflect a stock’s “real” value. In financial jargon, this true value is known as the intrinsic value.

For example, let’s say that a company’s stock was trading at $20. After doing extensive homework on the company, we determine that it really is worth $25. In other words, we determine the intrinsic value of the firm to be $25. This is clearly relevant because an investor wants to buy stocks that are trading at prices significantly below their estimated intrinsic value.

This leads us to one of the second major assumptions of fundamental analysis: in the long run, the stock market will reflect the fundamentals. There is no point in buying a stock based on intrinsic value if the price never reflected that value. Nobody knows how long “the long run” really is. It could be days or years

By focusing on a particular business, an investor can estimate the intrinsic value of a firm and thus find opportunities where he or she can buy at a discount. If all goes well, the investment will pay off over time as the market catches up to the fundamentals

Fundamental Analysis involves in three steps:

1. Company Analysis
2. Industry Analysis
3. Economy Analysis

◙ The Company Analysis:

A company's financial statements, we're going to take a look at some of the qualitative aspects of a company.

Fundamental analysis seeks to determine the intrinsic value of a company's stock. But since qualitative factors, by definition, represent aspects of a company's business that are difficult or impossible to quantify, incorporating that kind of information into a pricing evaluation can be quite difficult. On the flip side, as we've demonstrated, we can't ignore the less tangible characteristics of a company

In this section we are going to highlight some of the company-specific qualitative factors that you should be aware of

●Business Model

Even before an investor looks at a company's financial statements or does any research, one of the most important questions that should be asked is: What exactly does the company do? This is referred to as a company's business model – it's how a company makes money.

Sometimes business models are easy to understand. Take McDonalds, for instance, which sells hamburgers, fries, soft drinks, salads and whatever other new special they are promoting at the time. It's a simple model, easy enough for anybody to understand.

Other times, you'd be surprised how complicated it can get. Boston Chicken Inc. is a prime example of this. Back in the early '90s its stock was the darling of Wall Street. At one point the company's CEO bragged that they were the "first new fast-food restaurant to reach $1 billion in sales since 1969". The problem is, they didn't make money by selling chicken. Rather, they made their money from royalty fees and high-interest loans to franchisees. Boston Chicken was really nothing more than a big franchisor. On top of this, management was aggressive with how it recognized its revenue. As soon as it was revealed that all the franchisees were losing money, the house of cards collapsed and the company went bankrupt.

At the very least, we should understand the business model of any company we invest in. The "Oracle of Omaha", Warren Buffett, rarely invests in tech stocks because most of the time he doesn't understand them. This is not to say the technology sector is bad, but it's not Buffett's area of expertise; he doesn't feel comfortable investing in this area. Similarly, unless we understand a company's business model, we don't know what the drivers are for future growth, and we leave ourselves vulnerable to being blindsided like shareholders of Boston Chicken were

● Competitive Advantage:

Another business consideration for investors is competitive advantage. A company's long-term success is driven largely by its ability to maintain a competitive advantage - and keep it. Powerful competitive advantages, such as Coca Cola's brand name and Microsoft's domination of the personal computer operating system, create a moat around a business allowing it to keep competitors at bay and enjoy growth and profits. When a company can achieve competitive advantage, its shareholders can be well rewarded for decades

Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, distinguishes between strategic positioning and operational effectiveness. Operational effectiveness means a company is better than rivals at similar activities while competitive advantage means a company is performing better than rivals by doing different activities or performing similar activities in different ways. Investors should know that few companies are able to compete successfully for long if they are doing the same things as their competitors

Professor Porter argues that, in general, sustainable competitive advantage gained by:

• A unique competitive position
• Clear tradeoffs and choices vis-à-vis competitors
• Activities tailored to the company's strategy
• A high degree of fit across activities (it is the activity system, not the parts, that ensure sustainability)
● A high degree of operational effectiveness

● Management:

Just as an army needs a general to lead it to victory, a company relies upon management to steer it towards financial success. Some believe that management is the most important aspect for investing in a company. It makes sense - even the best business model is doomed the leaders of the company fail to properly execute the plan

So how does an average investor go about evaluating the management of a company?

This is one of the areas in which individuals are truly at a disadvantage compared to professional investors. We can't set up a meeting with management if we want to invest a few thousand dollars. On the other hand, if we are a fund manager interested in investing millions of dollars, there is a good chance we can schedule a face-to-face meeting with the up brass of the firm

Every public company has a corporate information section on its website. Usually there will be a quick biography on each executive with their employment history, educational background and any applicable achievements. Don't expect to find anything useful here. Let's be honest: We're looking for dirt, and no company is going to put negative information on its corporate website

Instead, here are a few ways for us to get a feel for management

1. Conference Calls:

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) host quarterly conference calls. (Sometimes you'll get other executives as well.) The first portion of the call is management basically reading off the financial results. What is really interesting is the question-and-answer portion of the call. This is when the line is open for analysts to call in and ask management direct questions. Answers here can be revealing about the company, but more importantly, listen for candor. Do they avoid questions, like politicians, or do they provide forthright answers?

2. Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A):

The Management Discussion and Analysis is found at the beginning of the annual report. In theory, the MD&A is supposed to be frank commentary on the management's outlook. Sometimes the content is worthwhile, other times its boilerplate. One tip is to compare what management said in past years with what they are saying now. Is it the same material rehashed? Have strategies actually been implemented? If possible, sit down and read the last five years of MD&A; it can be illuminating

3. Ownership and Insider Sales:

Just about any large company will compensate executives with a combination of cash, restricted stock and options. While there are problems with stock options, it is a positive sign that members of management are also shareholders. The ideal situation is when the founder of the company is still in charge. Examples include Bill Gates (in the '80s and '90s), Michael Dell and Warren Buffett. When we know that a majority of management's wealth is in the stock, we can have confidence that they will do the right thing. As well, it's worth checking out if management has been selling its stock. This has to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), so it's publicly available information. Talk is cheap - think twice if you see management unloading all of its shares while saying something else in the media.

4. Past Performance:

Another good way to get a feel for management capability is to check and see how executives have done at other companies in the past. You can normally find biographies of top executives on company web sites. Identify the companies they worked at in the past and do a search on those companies and their performance

● Corporate Governance:

Corporate governance describes the policies in place within an organization denoting the relationships and responsibilities between management, directors and stakeholders. These policies are defined and determined in the company charter and its bylaws, along with corporate laws and regulations. The purpose of corporate governance policies is to ensure that proper checks and balances are in place, making it more difficult for anyone to conduct unethical and illegal activities.

Good corporate governance is a situation in which a company complies with all of its governance policies and applicable government regulations (such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) in order to look out for the interests of the company's investors and other stakeholders.

Although, there are companies and organizations (such as Standard & Poor's) that attempt to quantitatively assess companies on how well their corporate governance policies serve stakeholders, most of these reports are quite expensive for the average investor to purchase.

Fortunately, corporate governance policies typically cover a few general areas: structure of the board of directors, stakeholder rights and financial and information transparency. With a little research and the right questions in mind, investors can get a good idea about a company's corporate governance.

● Financial and Information Transparency:

This aspect of governance relates to the quality and timeliness of a company's financial disclosures and operational happenings. Sufficient transparency implies that a company's financial releases are written in a manner that stakeholders can follow what management is doing and therefore have a clear understanding of the company's current financial situation

● Stakeholder Rights:

This aspect of corporate governance examines the extent that a company's policies are benefiting stakeholder interests, notably shareholder interests. Ultimately, as owners of the company, shareholders should have some access to the board of directors if they have concerns or want something addressed. Therefore companies with good governance give shareholders a certain amount of ownership voting rights to call meetings to discuss pressing issues with the board.

Another relevant area for good governance, in terms of ownership rights, is whether or not a company possesses large amounts of takeover defenses (such as the Macaroni Defense or the Poison Pill) or other measures that make it difficult for changes in management, directors and ownership to occur.

● Structure of the Board of Directors:

The board of directors is composed of representatives from the company and representatives from outside of the company. The combination of inside and outside director’s attempts to provide an independent assessment of management's performance, making sure that the interests of shareholders are represented.

The key word when looking at the board of directors is independence. The board of directors is responsible for protecting shareholder interests and ensuring that the upper management of the company is doing the same. The board possesses the right to hire and fire members of the board on behalf of the shareholders. A board filled with insiders will often not serve as objective critics of management and will defend their actions as good and beneficial, regardless of the circumstances

We've now gone over the business model, management and corporate governance. These three areas are all important to consider when analyzing any company. We will now move on to looking at qualitative factors in the environment in which the company operates

◙ The Industry Analysis:

Each industry has differences in terms of its customer base, market share among firms, industry-wide growth, competition, regulation and business cycles. Learning about how the industry works will give an investor a deeper understanding of a company's financial health.

● Customers

Some companies serve only a handful of customers, while others serve millions. In general, it's a red flag (a negative) if a business relies on a small number of customers for a large portion of its sales because the loss of each customer could dramatically affect revenues. For example, think of a military supplier who has 100% of its sales with the U.S. government. One change in government policy could potentially wipe out all of its sales. For this reason, companies will always disclose in their 10-K if any one customer accounts for a majority of revenues.

● Market Share

Understanding a company's present market share can tell volumes about the company's business. The fact that a company possesses an 85% market share tells you that it is the largest player in its market by far. Furthermore, this could also suggest that the company possesses some sort of "economic moat," in other words, a competitive barrier serving to protect its current and future earnings, along with its market share. Market share is important because of economies of scale. When the firm is bigger than the rest of its rivals, it is in a better position to absorb the high fixed costs of a capital-intensive industry.

● Industry Growth

One way of examining a company's growth potential is to first examine whether the amount of customers in the overall market will grow. This is crucial because without new customers, a company has to steal market share in order to grow.

In some markets, there is zero or negative growth, a factor demanding careful consideration. For example, a manufacturing company dedicated solely to creating audio compact cassettes might have been very successful in the '70s, '80s and early '90s. However, that same company would probably have a rough time now due to the advent of newer technologies, such as CDs and MP3s. The current market for audio compact cassettes is only a fraction of what it was during the peak of its popularity.

● Competition

Simply looking at the number of competitors goes a long way in understanding the competitive landscape for a company. Industries that have limited barriers to entry and a large number of competing firms create a difficult operating environment for firms.

One of the biggest risks within a highly competitive industry is pricing power. This refers to the ability of a supplier to increase prices and pass those costs on to customers. Companies operating in industries with few alternatives have the ability to pass on costs to their customers. A great example of this is Wal-Mart. They are so dominant in the retailing business, that Wal-Mart practically sets the price for any of the suppliers wanting to do business with them. If you want to sell to Wal-Mart, you have little, if any, pricing power.

● Regulation

Certain industries are heavily regulated due to the importance or severity of the industry's products and/or services. As important as some of these regulations are to the public, they can drastically affect the attractiveness of a company for investment purposes.

In industries where one or two companies represent the entire industry for a region (such as utility companies), governments usually specify how much profit each company can make. In these instances, while there is the potential for sizable profits, they are limited due to regulation.

In other industries, regulation can play a less direct role in affecting industry pricing. For example, the drug industry is one of most regulated industries. And for good reason - no one wants an ineffective drug that causes deaths to reach the market. As a result, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) require that new drugs must pass a series of clinical trials before they can be sold and distributed to the general public. However, the consequence of all this testing is that it usually takes several years and millions of dollars before a drug is approved. Keep in mind that all these costs are above and beyond the millions that the drug company has spent on research and development.

All in all, investors should always be on the lookout for regulations that could potentially have a material impact upon a business' bottom line. Investors should keep these regulatory costs in mind as they assess the potential risks and rewards of investing.

4. Company Analysis:

The performance of a company depends on the performance of the economy. The economic variables that an investor must monitor as part of fundamental analysis are as follows:

a) Growth rate of national income such as Gross National Product (GNP), Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Net National Product (GNP)
b) Inflation
c) Interest rate
d) Exchange
e) Infrastructure
f) Monsoon

Fundamental Analysis: Introduction to Financial Statements

The massive amount of numbers in a company's financial statements can be bewildering and intimidating to many investors. On the other hand, if you know how to analyze them, the financial statements are a gold mine of information.

Financial statements are the medium by which a company discloses information concerning its financial performance. Followers of fundamental analysis use the quantitative information gleaned from financial statements to make investment decisions. Before we jump into the specifics of the three most important financial statements - income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements - we will briefly introduce each financial statement's specific function, along with where they can be found.

►The Balance Sheet
The balance sheet represents a record of a company's assets, liabilities and equity at a particular point in time. The balance sheet is named by the fact that a business's financial structure balances in the following manner:
Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders' Equity

Assets represent the resources that the business owns or controls at a given point in time. This includes items such as cash, inventory, machinery and buildings. The other side of the equation represents the total value of the financing the company has used to acquire those assets. Financing comes as a result of liabilities or equity. Liabilities represent debt, while equity represents the total value of money that the owners have contributed to the business - including retained earnings, which is the profit made in previous years

►The Income Statement:

The balance sheet takes a snapshot approach in examining a business; the income statement measures a company's performance over a specific time frame. Technically, you could have a balance sheet for a month or even a day, but you'll only see public companies report quarterly and annually.

The income statement presents information about revenues, expenses and profit that was generated as a result of the business' operations for that period.

► Statement of Cash Flows:

The statement of cash flows represents a record of a business' cash inflows and outflows over a period of time. Typically, a statement of cash flows focuses on the following cash-related activities:

• Operating Cash Flow (OCF): Cash generated from day-to-day business operations
• Cash from investing (CFI): Cash used for investing in assets, as well as the proceeds from the sale of other businesses, equipment or long-term assets
• Cash from financing (CFF): Cash paid or received from the issuing and borrowing of funds

The cash flow statement is important because it's very difficult for a business to manipulate its cash situation. There is plenty that aggressive accountants can do to manipulate earnings, but it's tough to fake cash in the bank. For this reason some investors use the cash flow statement as a more conservative measure of a company's performance.

◙ Criticisms of Fundamental Analysis:

The biggest criticisms of fundamental analysis come primarily from two groups: proponents of technical analysis and believers of the “efficient market hypothesis”.

Technical analysis is the other major form of security analysis. We’re not going to get into too much detail on the subject

Put simply, technical analysts base their investments (or, more precisely, their trades) solely on the price and volume movements of securities. Using charts and a number of other tools, they trade on momentum, not caring about the fundamentals. While it is possible to use both techniques in combination, one of the basic tenets of technical analysis is that the market discounts everything. Accordingly, all news about a company already is priced into a stock, and therefore a stock’s price movements give more insight than the underlying fundamental factors if the business itself.

Followers of the efficient market hypothesis, however, are usually in disagreement with both fundamental and technical analysts. The efficient market hypothesis contends that it is essentially impossible to produce market-beating returns in the long run, through either fundamental or technical analysis. The rationale for this argument is that, since the market efficiently prices all stocks on an ongoing basis, any opportunities for excess returns derived from fundamental (or technical) analysis would be almost immediately whittled away by the market’s many participants, making it impossible for anyone to meaningfully outperform the market over the long term

Let's recap what we've learned:

• Financial reports are required by law and are published both quarterly and annually.
• Management discussion and analysis (MD&A) gives investors a better understanding of what the company does and usually points out some key areas where it performed well.
• Audited financial reports have much more credibility than unaudited ones.
• The balance sheet lists the assets, liabilities and shareholders' equity.
• For all balance sheets: Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders’ Equity. The two sides must always equal each other (or balance each other).
• The income statement includes figures such as revenue, expenses, earnings and earnings per share.
• For a company, the top line is revenue while the bottom line is net income.
• The income statement takes into account some non-cash items, such as depreciation.
• The cash flow statement strips away all non-cash items and tells you how much actual money the company generated.
The cash flow statement is divided into three parts: cash from operations, financing and investing.

Always read the notes to the financial statements. They provide more in-depth information on a wide range of figures reported in the three financial statements.

Conclusion:

Whenever we’re thinking of investing in a company it is vital that we understand what it does, its market and the industry in which it operates. We should never blindly invest in a company

One of the most important areas for any investor to look at when researching a company is the financial statements. It is essential to understand the purpose of each part of these statements and how to interpret them.

Reference:

www.investopedia.com