Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet : The Search for Financial Reality

by Giroux, Gary

• ISBN13: 9780471768555
• ISBN10: 0471768553
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-21
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

Praise for Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet"Gary Giroux brings a breezy, entertaining writing style that really helps the reader untangle arcane accounting practices, including stock options, pensions, off-balance sheet items, and the rest of his 'dirty thirty.'" Edward Swanson, Durst Chair and Professor of Accounting, Texas A&M University"Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet provides equity investors with clear explanations of today's financial environment together with specific analysis tools to assess the quality of earnings. Gary Giroux provides a valuable and easy-to-use scoring system where investors assign grades to help them in their investment decisions. Earnings Magic is a must-read for any investor in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow 30). Giroux thoroughly analyzes some of the biggest and best known companies." Andrew McLelland, Assistant Professor of Accounting, Auburn UniversityYOUR KEY TO EVALUATING A COMPANY'S EARNINGS QUALITYWouldn't you like to know as much as you could about a company before you invest in it? Financial information on companies is readily available, but not necessarily easy to interpret.With shrewd tips and state-of-the-art analytical tools, Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet arms you with the key strategies and principles to help you evaluate whether a company's bottom line is headed toward excellence or financial abuse. This eye-opening guide expertly walks you through the tangle of potentially inflated earnings and misleading accounting disclosures to determine a company's financial reality.

Author Biography

GARY GIROUX, CPA, PhD, is Shelton Professor of Accounting at Texas A&M University. He received his PhD from Texas Tech University and has been at Texas A&M for over two-and-a-half decades. Dr. Giroux has published over fifty articles in various professional journals and is the author of Core Concepts of Financial Analysis: A User Approach, Detecting Earnings Management (Wiley), and Dollars & Scholars, Scribes & Bribes: The Story of Accounting. </p>

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Section 1 Earnings Magic and the Unbalanced Sheet	1	(70)
Chapter 1 What Is Earnings Magic? Does the Balance Sheet Balance?	3	(14)
Chapter 2 Caught in the Act!	17	(18)
Chapter 3 The New Accounting	35	(16)
Chapter 4 Wading Through the Earnings Numbers	51	(20)
Section 2 The Big 8 and Dirty 30: Key Accounting Issues That Signal Earnings Magic	71	(150)
Chapter 5 Key Accounting Issues: An Overview	73	(16)
Chapter 6 Stock Options	89	(10)
Chapter 7 Pensions and Other Postemployment Benefits	99	(16)
Chapter 8 Revenues	115	(12)
Chapter 9 Earnings, Expenses, and Expectations	127	(12)
Chapter 10 Strange Special Items and Other Things That Should Not Be on the Income Statement	139	(10)
Chapter 11 Treasury Stock and Dividends	149	(10)
Chapter 12 Off–Balance Sheet Items: Operating Leases and Special-Purpose Entities	159	(14)
Chapter 13 Acquisitions and All That Goodwill	173	(14)
Chapter 14 Dishonorable Mention: The Rest of the Dirty 30	187	(34)
Section 3 Putting It All Together	221	(50)
Chapter 15 Finding Signals of Financial Excellence and Earnings Magic	223	(12)
Chapter 16 A Checklist for Evaluating Financial Excellence	235	(16)
Chapter 17 An Investment Strategy	251	(14)
Chapter 18 Searching for Help: Useful Internet Sites	265	(6)
Epilogue	271	(2)
References	273	(6)
Index	279