by Trend analysis is a technique used in financial statement analysis that involves examining financial data over time to identify patterns and trends. This method can be used to analyze a variety of financial metrics, including revenue, expenses, profits, and ratios. By analyzing trends in financial data, analysts can gain insights into a company’s financial performance and make informed decisions about investing or lending to the company.
Formula for Trend Analysis:
The formula for trend analysis is relatively simple. It involves calculating the percentage change in a financial metric over time. The formula is as follows:
Percentage Change = (Current Year Value – Previous Year Value) / Previous Year Value x 100
For example, if a company’s revenue was $100,000 in the previous year and $120,000 in the current year, the percentage change in revenue would be calculated as follows:
Percentage Change in Revenue = ($120,000 – $100,000) / $100,000 x 100 = 20%
This means that the company’s revenue increased by 20% from the previous year.
Example Table:
To illustrate trend analysis, let’s consider the following example table:
| Year | Revenue | Expenses | Profit |
| 2016 | $100,000 | $80,000 | $20,000 |
| 2017 | $120,000 | $90,000 | $30,000 |
| 2018 | $130,000 | $100,000 | $30,000 |
| 2019 | $140,000 | $110,000 | $30,000 |
| 2020 | $150,000 | $120,000 | $30,000 |
Using the formula above, we can calculate the percentage change for each financial metric over time. For example, the percentage change in revenue from 2016 to 2017 is:
Percentage Change in Revenue (2016 to 2017) = ($120,000 – $100,000) / $100,000 x 100 = 20%
We can repeat this calculation for each year and for each financial metric. The results are shown in the following table:
| Year | Revenue % Change | Expenses % Change | Profit % Change |
| 2016 | – | – | – |
| 2017 | 20% | 12.5% | 50% |
| 2018 | 8.33% | 11.11% | 0% |
| 2019 | 7.69% | 10% | 0% |
| 2020 | 7.14% | 9.09% | 0% |
Advantages of Trend Analysis:
- Helps in forecasting future performance: Trend analysis provides a historical perspective of the financial statements which helps in forecasting future performance of the company.
- Easy to understand: Trend analysis is simple and easy to understand as it involves the comparison of financial data of different periods.
- Identifies the direction of change: Trend analysis helps in identifying the direction of change, whether it is positive or negative, in the financial statement items. This information can be useful in decision-making.
- Helps in identifying the business cycle: Trend analysis can also help in identifying the business cycle, which is the pattern of growth and contraction of the economy over a period of time.
- Helps in benchmarking: Trend analysis helps in benchmarking the performance of a company against its competitors in the same industry.
Disadvantages of Trend Analysis:
- Ignores non-trending factors: Trend analysis focuses only on the trends and ignores non-trending factors like seasonality, cyclical fluctuations, and other external factors that can affect the financial statements.
- Limited usefulness for short-term analysis: Trend analysis is more useful for long-term analysis as short-term fluctuations can skew the trend.
- May not be accurate: Trend analysis assumes that the past trends will continue in the future which may not always be accurate due to changes in the business environment, new competition, or other unforeseen factors.
- Limited use for comparison across industries: Trend analysis may not be useful for comparison across industries as the trend for one industry may not be applicable to another industry.
- Requires accurate data: Trend analysis requires accurate and consistent financial data over a period of time. Any errors or inconsistencies in the data can affect the accuracy of the trend analysis.
