How to quickly judge whether the financial reports of listed companies are fraudulent?

Generally speaking, there are two directions to forge a company's financial report: inflating profits and assets, in order to make the report look better and show that the company is more powerful; Exaggerate costs and reduce profits in order to evade taxes. Generally, most small companies will start from the direction of reducing profits and reduce the company's tax costs. On the contrary, listed companies generally proceed from the direction of inflated profits due to factors such as company performance, influence on stock price changes, and pursuit of more investment. If the listed company's financial report is fraudulent, it can be seen from the following aspects.

If the company inflated its profits, it generally increased its income through false transactions, and the accounts receivable in the corresponding balance sheet would increase substantially, and the statements would be digested by returning goods in the future. However, because it is a false transaction, it will not generate cash flow, which will inevitably affect the turnover rate of accounts receivable, leading to a decline in the turnover rate of accounts receivable, reflecting the result that the average payment period has increased compared with the same period.

The average collection period, if there is no special policy or economic environment changes, will generally remain in a stable state. The shorter the average collection period, the stronger the repayment ability of the company, and the lower the risk of the company's capital chain breaking. On the other hand, the backlog of goods and the long payment cycle will put some pressure on the company's capital chain.

Therefore, whether there is obvious change in the average collection period can be used to judge whether the company has abnormal transactions this year. For example, in the year of LeTV, the collection cycle of accounts receivable changed greatly in recent years, and it continued to rise, which was very unstable. Until then, serious internal problems broke out in LeTV.

Generally speaking, the false financial reports of listed companies have the following characteristics: the operating income has increased substantially; Accounts receivable have increased substantially; The cash flow of operating activities has not changed year-on-year; The average cash collection days are getting longer and longer.

Generally, there are few false operations to reduce the profit direction of listed companies, because the supervision of listed companies is strict and the cost of fraud is high. The profit reduction brought by this operation is far less than the risk brought by tax evasion. For listed companies, it is obviously a bit of a loss.