For the past four Saturdays (October 6, 13, 20 and 27), the Development Center for Finance successfully conducted its Financial Statement Analysis public seminar at the Cesar E.A. Virata School of Business, UP Diliman, Quezon City.

Day 1 was handled by Dr. Arthur Cayanan. The participants were given a roadmap on Financial Statement Analysis. This session focused on understanding the balance sheet and its elements: accounts receivable, inventories, investments in marketable securities, intangible assets, investment properties, property, plant and equipment and liabilities. A case was used to emphasize the topics discussed.

The foundations of Financial Statement Analysis were solidified on Day 2, where Professor Pamela Lloren discussed the equity portion of the balance sheet. They also discussed the income statement and the cash flow statement, with emphasis on the quality of earnings. Several exercises were given to illustrate the topics discussed and how financial statements are done.

On Day 3, Professor Diogenes Dy talked about the meat of the seminar, Financial Statement Analysis techniques. Common-size, trend and financial ratio analysis were covered with each technique being applied to a real company. Qualitative aspects and limitations of analyzing financial statements were also presented.

Finally on Day 4, Dr. Arthur Cayanan facilitated case workshops on five actual companies in the Philippines. The workshops helped the participants apply and appreciate what they learned throughout the seminar.

There were 26 participants and some of the feedback were as follows:

“Speaker is very engaging. You get to understand better with the examples.”

“I will definitely inform or encourage our VP for Finance to send also other accounting managers to this seminar, next run!”

“Dr. Art Cayanan is a fantastic professor/lecturer as he was able to ‘laymanize’ the topic and ensure the participants learned the topic through his series of examples.”