Assess financial health of a company using financial ratios and textual analysis in annual reports: an applied case study
Dátum
Szerzők
Folyóirat címe
Folyóirat ISSN
Kötet címe (évfolyam száma)
Kiadó
Absztrakt
The study has investigated the financial health of the company Gedeon Richter as a case study using two different method financial ratios analysis which focus on the Altman Z-score and textual analysis with focus on CEO’s letters in the period of 5 year from 2019 to 2023. With the primary aim of assessing if the two methods give a more comprehensive view of the company’s financial health by using both quantitative and qualitative data. The finding revealed that while financial ratios reflect the past financial operation of the company, textual analysis gives attention to important topics, management’s tone which affected by market condition and internal situation including non-financial aspects. In some case even though company gain more risk it could be positive due to the alignment with the strategy and some case, the negative tone is not affecting the financial operation as it is market situation which not directly affect financial operations, but it is still a risk to be considered. In conclusion, while the two methods are fundamentally different, they could work well with each other in giving holistic understanding of the financial health situation of the company through analyzing both quantitative, historical data and subjective outlook and sentiment. There are some limitations to be considered on the subjectivity, complexity and unstructured nature of textual data and the bias could be from the only point of view of CEO and the generalization of the method due to the different in the textual data is not always available and the finance and industry specific vocabulary could cause a lot of difficulty of analyzing. In conclusion, the use of combined methods is suggested and there is a need for further research to develop better tools for textual analysis and explore the potential of making textual data as a required component of financial reporting.