Financial Acumen: Can One Week Make a Difference?
Denise Probert, CPA, CGMA
I help individuals and teams know how to use accounting & finance information to make and evaluate strategic decisions | LinkedIn Learning Instructor | FP&A, Financial Acumen & Leadership Coach & Consultant | Professor
Are you looking to enhance your financial acumen? If so, this newsletter is for you.
Accountants and CPAs, like myself, take great pride in being rule-compliant. In fact, we thrive on the clarity that rules provide. We prepare financial statements in accordance with US GAAP. Subsequently, auditors provide an opinion on these financial statements that users, such as investors and analysts, rely on to make informed decisions.
However, GAAP-compliant financial statements, as presented, often require adjustments to be most useful for decision-making. Allow me to illustrate this by showing you one adjustment that should be made, when necessary, before conducting any additional analysis (e.g., ratio analysis).
The 53-Week Year!
The job of the financial statement preparer, usually the accountant, is to create financial statements that accurately depict the economic events of the fiscal year. Some companies have a year-end that varies annually. For instance, Dollar General Corporation has had the following fiscal year ends for the last three fiscal years:
FY2023 will conclude on February 2, 2024, just a few weeks from now.
It's important to note that fiscal year 2022 had 53 weeks, while the preceding two fiscal years had 52 weeks. The following is an excerpt from the Dollar General Corporation's 10-K SEC filing for fiscal year 2022, ending on February 3, 2023.
This excerpt might require reading glasses for all of us so I’ve pulled out the same excerpt from the accompanying Excel spreadsheet filed by Dollar General Corporation with their 10-k.
We could start analyzing the information in this spreadsheet immediately without checking if each of the years presented is 52 weeks. Notice that nowhere on this Consolidated Statement of Income is it reported that FY2022 presents the results of a fiscal year with 53 weeks. The 10-K does have the following statement in the “Introduction”.
“This report contains references to years 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020, which represent fiscal years ending or ended February 2, 2024, February 3, 2023, January 28, 2022 and January 29, 2021, respectively. Our fiscal year ends on the Friday closest to January 31. Our 2022 fiscal year consisted of 53 weeks, while each of the remaining years listed consists of 52 weeks.”
If you don’t read the 10-K and instead jump to the financial statements, you’ll miss the fact. Let’s examine the impact. A quick look at the net earnings (Row 13) reveals what appears to be the beginning of a recovery in FY2022 after a challenging FY2021.
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The Adjustment
We know the most recent fiscal year had 53 weeks. We have three years of net earnings that are not comparable. Here is the adjustment needed:
Net earnings / 53 weeks x 52 weeks = Adjusted net earnings
We apply this adjustment only to the fiscal year(s) that have 52 weeks.
$2,415,989 / 53 x 52 = $2,370,404 = Adjusted FY2022 Net earnings
Now, when we compare this most recent net earnings, adjusted, to prior years, we can see that there was a continued decline in net earnings in the most recent year.
Stronger Financial Acumen
Your financial acumen has just become stronger, and this will translate into greater confidence when reading financial statements and participating in financial conversations.
Can You Believe the View in this Photo?
I was able to spend the majority of last week at my friend’s condo in Winter Park, CO. The days were spent working, cooking, taking walks, playing cribbage and looking at this view. There was a lot of time for reflection as well. It was a great way to start 2024. I hope you've had a great start as well.
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