Learning about shares: Past profits useful pointers to future

Barbara Kendall asks:
Q. I've started collecting information on companies I'm considering investing in. I know companies' financial statements hold clues, but how do I decipher them? Can you point out a couple of pieces of information that I should really care about?

Dan Dividend responds:

A. Companies put a wealth of information in their financial results, and you can feel swamped by the surpluses, liabilities, payables, accruals, cash flows, in and outflows.

I'll concentrate on after-tax profit and debt-to-asset ratio.

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