Stock Investment Terms

RETURN ON EQUITY
A measure of a corporation's profitability that reveals how much profit a company generates with the money shareholders have invested.

DEBT/EQUITY RATIO
A measure of a company's financial leverage calculated by dividing its total liabilities by stockholders' equity. It indicates what proportion of equity and debt the company is using to finance its assets.

LONG-TERM DEBT
Loans and financial obligations lasting over one year.

For example, debts obligations such as bonds and notes, which have maturities greater than one year, would be considered long-term debt. Other securities such as T-bills and commercial papers would not be long-term debt because their maturities are typically shorter than one year.

LIABILITIES
A company's legal debts or obligations that arise during the course of business operations. Liabilities are settled over time through the transfer of economic benefits including money, goods or services.

PROFIT MARGIN
A ratio of profitability calculated as net income divided by revenues, or net profits divided by sales. It measures how much out of every dollar of sales a company actually keeps in earnings.

Profit margin is very useful when comparing companies in similar industries. A higher profit margin indicates a more profitable company that has better control over its costs compared to its competitors. Profit margin is displayed as a percentage; a 20% profit margin, for example, means the company has a net income of $0.20 for each dollar of sales.

Looking at the earnings of a company often doesn't tell the entire story. Increased earnings are good, but an increase does not mean that the profit margin of a company is improving. For instance, if a company has costs that have increased at a greater rate than sales, it leads to a lower profit margin. This is an indication that costs need to be under better control.

Imagine a company has a net income of $10 million from sales of $100 million, giving it a profit margin of 10% ($10 million/$100 million). If in the next year net income rose to $15 million on sales of $200 million, its profit margin would fall to 7.5%. So while the company increased its net income, it has done so with diminishing profit margins.

NET INCOME
1. A company's total earnings (or profit). Net income is calculated by taking revenues and adjusting for the cost of doing business, depreciation, interest, taxes and other expenses. This number is found on a company's income statement and is an important measure of how profitable the company is over a period of time. The measure is also used to calculate earnings per share.

2. An individual’s income after deductions, credits and taxes are factored into gross income. Deductions and credits are subtracted from gross income to arrive at taxable income, which is used to calculate income tax. Net income is income tax subtracted from taxable income.

NET SALES
The amount of sales generated by a company after the deduction of returns, allowances for damaged or missing goods and any discounts allowed. The sales number reported on a company's financial statements is a net sales number, reflecting these deductions.

Deductions from the gross sales are represented in the net sales figure. Therefore, net sales gives a more accurate picture of the actual sales generated by the company, or the money that it expects to receive. A company will book its revenue once the good or service is delivered or performed for the customer. However, in the case of returns, even after a good has been sold it can often be returned under a company's return policy. If the good is returned by the customer, it is not considered a sale, as the customer will receive a credit or money back, so it needs to be deducted from the gross sales. The allowances for damaged or missing goods reflect the situations in which the goods are damaged in transit or are not what the customer expected.

Many companies also offer discounts, especially on credit sales where the customer pays off the amount early. This discount is deducted from gross sales, reducing overall revenue.

INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS (IPOs)
The first sale of stock by a private company to the public. IPOs are often issued by smaller, younger companies seeking the capital to expand, but can also be done by large privately owned companies looking to become publicly traded.

In an IPO, the issuer obtains the assistance of an underwriting firm, which helps it determine what type of security to issue (common or preferred), the best offering price and the time to bring it to market.

Also referred to as a "public offering".

COMMODITY
1. A basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other commodities of the same type. Commodities are most often used as inputs in the production of other goods or services. The quality of a given commodity may differ slightly, but it is essentially uniform across producers. When they are traded on an exchange, commodities must also meet specified minimum standards, also known as a basis grade.

2. Any good exchanged during commerce, which includes goods traded on a commodity exchange.

1. The basic idea is that there is little differentiation between a commodity coming from one producer and the same commodity from another producer - a barrel of oil is basically the same product, regardless of the producer. Compare this to, say, electronics, where the quality and features of a given product will be completely different depending on the producer. Some traditional examples of commodities include grains, gold, beef, oil and natural gas. More recently, the definition has expanded to include financial products such as foreign currencies and indexes. Technological advances have also led to new types of commodities being exchanged in the marketplace: for example, cell phone minutes and bandwidth.

2. The sale and purchase of commodities is usually carried out through futures contracts on exchanges that standardize the quantity and minimum quality of the commodity being traded. For example, the Chicago Board of Trade stipulates that one wheat contract is for 5,000 bushels and also states what grades of wheat (e.g. No. 2 Northern Spring) can be used to satisfy the contract.

ECONOMIC MOAT
The competitive advantage that one company has over other companies in the same industry. This term was coined by renowned investor Warren Buffett.

The wider the moat, the larger and more sustainable the competitive advantage. By having a well-known brand name, pricing power and a large portion of market demand, a company with a wide moat possesses characteristics that act as barriers against other companies wanting to enter into the industry.

LIQUIDATION
1. When a business or firm is terminated or bankrupt, its assets are sold and the proceeds pay creditors. Any leftovers are distributed to shareholders.

2. Any transaction that offsets or closes out a long or short position.

INTANGIBLES
An asset that is not physical in nature. Corporate intellectual property (items such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, business methodologies), goodwill and brand recognition are all common intangible assets in today's marketplace. An intangible asset can be classified as either indefinite or definite depending on the specifics of that asset. A company brand name is considered to be an indefinite asset, as it stays with the company as long as the company continues operations. However, if a company enters a legal agreement to operate under another company's patent, with no plans of extending the agreement, it would have a limited life and would be classified as a definite asset.

MARKET CAPITALIZATION
The total dollar market value of all of a company's outstanding shares. Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying a company's shares outstanding by the current market price of one share. The investment community uses this figure to determining a company's size, as opposed to sales or total asset figures.

Frequently referred to as "market cap". If a company has 35 million shares outstanding, each with a market value of $100, the company's market capitalization is $3.5 billion (35,000,000 x $100 per share).

Company size is a basic determinant of asset allocation and risk-return parameters for stocks and stock mutual funds. The term should not be confused with a company's "capitalization," which is a financial statement term that refers to the sum of a company's shareholders' equity plus long-term debt.

The stocks of large, medium and small companies are referred to as large-cap, mid-cap, and small-cap, respectively. Investment professionals differ on their exact definitions, but the current approximate categories of market capitalization are:

Large Cap: $10 billion plus
Mid Cap: $2 billion to $10 billion
Small Cap: Less than $2 billion