DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Alibaba Financial Statement Analysis

 

Reflection

 

With the recent Alibaba IPO, I wanted to apply what I learned about financial statement ratio analysis. Using information obtained from the Alibaba IPO prospectus taken from EDGAR (see Links) I performed horizontal analysis to find the change in financial statement items and calculated ratios for current ratio, accounts receivable turnover, return on assets, debt to assets, profit margin and times interest earned. This was an independently inititated project, though I did present it to my professor.

 

The most difficult part was reading through the prospectus. It is really long and filled with a lot of legal and financial detail that I wasn't very familiar with. However, I was happy to see that I could understand most of the content, which I don't think I would have been able to do previous to studying at LaGuardia. I learned a lot about Alibaba and was able to see in action many of the business principles I'd studied.

 

Learning about how the business worked and performing the financial statement analysis in excel were my favorite parts. Calculating ratios helped me see more clearly how strong the business was and gave me a basis for having an informed opinion about the company.

  

 

Attached is my excel workbook for the analysis as well as excerpts from the prospectus I wanted to emphasize / research more:

 

baba_financial statements.xlsx

Alibaba Prospectus notes.docx

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.