Financial Statement Analysis for Value Investing

How should an investor challenge the market price and find value? This book provides a new lens, arguing that value investing is a matter of understanding the business through accounting. Stephen Penman and Peter Pope—leading authorities on accounting and its investment applications—demonstrate why attention to financial statements is the key to judicious valuation. More broadly, they show that accounting fundamentals, when analyzed in a systematic manner, teach us how to think about value in new ways.

This guide to investing through analysis of financial statements presents both underlying principles and practical examples. It examines how an accounting book is structured, the ways to read one in order to extract information about value, and why accounting techniques help investors avoid common traps. Through cases that depict finance, investing, and accounting principles in action, readers learn crucial lessons for challenging the market’s pricing.

Financial Statement Analysis for Value Investing is essential reading for anyone interested in the fundamentals of value investing, practitioners and students alike. Both professional and individual investors can benefit from its techniques and insights, and it is well suited for value investing and financial statement analysis courses in business schools.

Stephen Penman is the George O. May Professor Emeritus and special lecturer at Columbia Business School, as well as a distinguished professor at Bocconi University. His books include Accounting for Value (Columbia, 2010).

Peter Pope is professor of accounting at Bocconi University and emeritus professor of accounting at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the academic coordinator of the Institute of Quantitative Investment Research.