The difference between Amortization and Depreciation in Cash Flow Statement

Cash is the most important asset of a company. A good company has the able to convert its goods and services into cash as fast as possible. Besides producing cash from its goods and services, non-cash item such as depreciation and amortization are also considered as cash in the cash flow statement. This is one of the major reason why some companies are able to give dividend to its shareholders even though the company did not get any profit in that particular fiscal year. As a result, we should put much attention on both amortization and depreciation when we want to analysis and predict the cash flow condition of a particular company.

According to investopedia.com, although both of them, depreciation and amortization, are used interchangeably, technically, we should use depreciation and amortization to describe tangible assets, e.g. properties, plant and equipment, and intangible assets, e.g. good will, trademark, respectively.

Nevertheless, as an investor instead of an accountant, it looks like both of them are the same thing because what I need to know is the sum of them and how long of them in such a way that I can predict the condition of the company in the future.

That's all for today. More fascinating articles and sharing will be updated from time to time in Xaivier Blog. So, you are welcome to subscribe our feed, look at our sitemap or simply visit our Homepage.

Written by: Xaivier Chia

Source: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/amortization.asp

Value Investing Conference 2008 by Whitney Tilson

Value Investing Conference 2008
Speaker: Whitney Tilson
Duration: 2 hours

In this talk, Whitney Tilson had explained what is value investing and some myths of value investing such as
"Grown is not always good". After that, two main points of value investing are discussed, that are, how to calculate Intrinsic value and what is your margin of safety in value investing.

Value investors always buy good business in good industry with good management.

Speaker also suggested to use a check list in such a way that investors will not miss any important step in evaluating a company. Example of check list is shown below:
Check list
1. Do I understand or familiar this company and its industry?
2. Is it good business, good industry, good competitiveness etc?
3. Is the management team trusted? Does the CEO care about shareholder?

Value investors bet that what market believes is wrong. Indeed, when the market undervalues a company by giving lower market price than its intrinsic value, it is a time for value investors to correct it.

Next, speaker also give some suggestions to beat the market, some of them are:
1. Be a good market timer. But it is very hard to be a good market timer.
2. Do better analysis.
3. Be more experienced investors.

Overcome irrational decisions or mistakes.

1. Right approaches
- Always think about that you are going to buy a whole company.
- Market should serve you instead of guide you
- Margin of safety
- Don't spend lots of effort to predict economy trend. It is very hard.
- Be flexible. Don't limit yourself in certain industries, certain companies etc.
- Form a investing team.

2.  The art of executing the right approaches
- Be humble: Recognize and accept your mistakes.
- Be independent
- Make decision based on analysis instead of emotion

This is quite impossible for me summarize 2 hours talk in one post, feel free to enjoy this talk by Whitney Tilson.




That's all for today. Feel free to give me a comment about this topic or any suggestion about Xaivier Blog. It will be a great support to Xaivier Blog.

Review by: Xaivier Chia

•Homepage•Sitemap•Subscribe Feed