Stock Profits: Getting to the Core—New Fundamentals for a New Age

assets (thus, maintenance of working capital) and growth in long-

term debt is a very negative trend. It confirms the initial opinion

that falling revenues and earnings demonstrate overall decline for

the corporation.

If the company had provided more detailed information on its

Web page, especially in the HTML-format annual report, it would

have been possible to also check for core earnings adjustments. We

cannot know whether the status of the company’s financial state-

ments would be improved or made worse if core earnings adjust-

ments were available. We can conclude—based on the numbers as

reported—that the trends are all negative.

Proctor & Gamble ...