What is an Earned Premium? An earned premium represents premiums earned on the portion of an insurance contract that has expired. The premiums associated with the active portion of an insurance contract are considered unearned, as the insurance company is still taking on a risk in order to generate the premiums. Understanding Earned Premium When…
What is a One-time Charge? A one-time charge, or non-recurring item, is a line item that is reported on the financial statements of a firm on an irregular basis. It is unrelated to a firm’s normal business operations and arises from unexpected events like lawsuits, layoffs, asset sales, etc. It is important to recognize and…
What are Operating Expenses? Operating expenses, operating expenditures, or “opex,” refers to the costs incurred by a business for its operational activities. In other words, operating expenses are the costs that a company must make to perform its operational activities. Operating expenses are essential for analyzing a company’s operational performance. It is therefore important for…
What is an Order Book? An order book is a list of orders that presents different offers from buyers and sellers for a specific security. It shows the prices and volumes that people in the market are willing to buy and sell the security for. Order books were originally used in stock exchanges but are…
What is an Ascending Channel? An ascending channel occurs when visually analyzing an overall uptrend in the asset price of a stock, bond, or other such investment. It is a method of technical analysis where the bottom line is described as the trendline “support” and the top line is called the “resistance.” Resistance occurs at…
What is Net Debt? Net debt is a financial liquidity metric that measures a company’s current interest-bearing debt and nets the debt against cash and cash-like items. In other words, net debt compares a company’s total debt with its liquid assets. Net debt is the amount of debt that would remain after a company had…
What is Cost of Equity? Cost of Equity is the rate of return a company pays out to equity investors. A firm uses cost of equity to assess the relative attractiveness of investments, including both internal projects and external acquisition opportunities. Companies typically use a combination of equity and debt financing, with equity capital being…
What is a Coverage Ratio? A Coverage Ratio is any one of a group of financial ratios used to measure a company’s ability to pay its financial obligations. A higher ratio indicates a greater ability of the company to meet its financial obligations while a lower ratio indicates a lesser ability. Coverage ratios are commonly…
What is Activity-Based Budgeting? Activity-based budgeting (ABB) is a budgeting method where activities are thoroughly analyzed to predict costs. ABB does not take historical costs into account when creating a budget. Understanding Activity-Based Budgeting While a traditional budgeting method adjusts previous costs based on inflation or changes in business activity, activity-based budgeting is a much…
What is an Accrued Liability? An accrued liability represents an expense a business has incurred during a specific period but has yet to be billed for. Accrued liabilities are only reported under accrual accounting to represent the performance of a company regardless of their cash position. They appear on the balance sheet under current liabilities….
