REFS is
a mine of invaluable information for the private investor.
Selecting shares without its help is like trying to
clap with one hand tied behind your back.
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Annualised
values
A standard
length accounting period is taken to be 12 months or 52 weeks
in Company REFS.
When a company
changes its financial year-end, a non-standard accounting period
arises, and this is denoted by a suffix against the column heading
which shows the period length in months.
To enable
different periods within the 7-year performance table to be
reasonably compared, all relevant values for a non-standard
period are arithmetically converted to an annualised basis;
this includes the consensus forecasts. For example, a turnover
value of £60m for a reported 9-month period, becomes £80m on
an annualised basis.
Annualised
values must, however, be regarded with caution, since they can
signify seasonal variations in performance which a year-end
change is often intended to smooth out.
The detailed
individual broker forecasts, shown separately, are not converted
in this way, and remain as reported by each broker (subject
to any adjustment for share capital charges). Attention is drawn
to footnotes describing the circumstances and period to which
individual forecasts relate. Similiarly, values given in the
shaded panel for last historic normalised eps,turnover, and
pretax profit remain as reported by the company. When
a suffix indicates a non-standard period, and its length in
months, these three values are not annualised.
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