(1) Credit analysis stage. The analysis of corporate financial statements originated from the so-called credit analysis conducted by American bankers. In order to ensure the safety of loans, banks generally require enterprises to provide information such as balance sheets, so as to analyze the solvency of enterprises, and its main task is to analyze the stability of business operations.
(2) In the investment analysis stage, in order to ensure and improve the investment income, investors use the analysis data of different enterprises and industries to make investment decisions. Therefore, the analysis of financial statements has entered the stage of investment analysis from the stage of credit analysis, and its main task has also shifted from stability analysis to profitability analysis.
(3) In the internal analysis stage, enterprises gradually realize the importance of financial statement analysis in the process of accepting bank analysis and consultation, and begin to change from passive acceptance analysis to active self-analysis. It has become a major requirement of modern enterprises and society to grasp the financial situation of enterprises through the analysis of financial statements, and then judge their operating conditions.
Their relationship:
These three stages of analysis are not the negation of the former by the latter, but the coexistence of the three in the analysis. No matter external analysis or internal analysis, the information they use mainly comes from the published financial statements. With the establishment of China's socialist market economic system and the deepening of enterprise reform, the demand for enterprise management from the perspective of accounting information is increasing.
Therefore, from the development trend, accounting can only play its role if it is integrated with other management activities of enterprises. That is to say, whether in theory or in practice, a research direction of future financial statement analysis must be to reveal the internal relations and laws between enterprise financial statement analysis and enterprise management.