Consider the financial statements of a company and carry out a financial analysis of the company and an appraisal of its share price.

Our class presentation was on Hugo Boss AG, but due to difficulties involved in the interpretation of AG accounts, I have analysed the Group accounts of Peacock plc. This was mainly due to the high dependence on tax within the German accounts and the varying ways of displaying consequently the same data, which made analysis difficult. I obtained the accounts from the FT Company account index in both electronic and hardback copy.

Peacocks is a value for money retailer of clothing, footwear and homeware. The total amount of stores they have in the UK is now 345.

1. Stocks reduced whilst continuing Retail/Wholesale expansion

2. 34 new Peacocks stores opened giving 345 at year-end

3. Woolworth's contract extended to 2005

4. New concept Peacocks store to be rolled out in current year

The earnings per share (EPS) is the amount of profit which is available to ordinary shareholders after paying tax, preference share and loan stock interest. Part of the EPS is used to pay a dividend to the ordinary shareholder and the remainder is put to reserves. So if the company paid out everything it earned last year in order to maintain its dividend rate, then apart from the fact that there's nothing left to put to reserves, the company's ability to maintain the dividend level is questionable.

Gross Profit is the difference between the sales price and the cost of goods sold. The Margin is an indication of the extra inflow from an extra unit of sales by the business. The turnover from the business as seen in the P&L account is originated from the UK and the Isle of Man, and comprises retail sales, less returns and is shown exclusive of value added tax and discounts given. Peacocks has managed to increase this margin by 1.81%. But on its own this figure is fairly meaningless. It must be stated here that Total Sales rose 14.8% to L269.8 million.

The return made to the business was 30.25% in 2002, yet the return to the shareholders, at 33.33% was more in both years. The shareholders have arranged a company structure where they get more than their simple proportion of ROCE.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Cash Flow, Acid Test, Investor Ratios, Plc Observations, ROCE ROCE, Share EPS, Retailers Peacocks, Yield Cap, Ratios ROE, Gross Profit, profit margin, cash flow, net profit, acid test, expenses sales, net profit margin, gross profit, ratios 2002 2001, investor ratios, ratios 2002, 2001 %, % change, 2001 % change, 2002 2001 %, expenses sales ratio,
Approximate Word count = 1994
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)