Financial Statements: Long-Lived Assets

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In the preceding section, we examined working capital, which refers to the current assets and liabilities of a company. In this section, we take a closer look at the long-lived assets (a.k.a. non-current assets) carried on the balance sheet. Long-lived assets are those that provide the company with a future economic benefit beyond the current year or operating period. It may be helpful to remember that most (but not all) long-lived assets start as some sort of purchase by the company.


Depreciation
Depreciation is tricky because it is the allocation of a prior capital expenditure to an annual expense. Reported profits are directly impacted by the depreciation method. And because depreciation is a non-cash expense charge, some analysts prefer cash flow measures or EBITDA, which is a measure of earnings before the subtraction of depreciation. However, depreciation typically cannot be ignored because it serves a valuable purpose: it sets aside an annual amount (a sinking fund, if you will) for the maintenance and replacement of fixed assets.