Prices and markets. Types of market, страница 59

Эти цены определены спросом и предложением на рынке за акции. Рыночная цена, поэтому, может быть выше или ниже чем номинальная цена. Если это выше, акция, как говорят, в большом почете; если это ниже, акция, как говорят, со скидкой.

·  Дивиденды

Дивиденд на акции выражен как процент от номинальной ценности. Например, если компания объявит дивиденд 25 % на его простых акциях в размере 1$, то держатели этих акций получат 25 % за каждую акцию, которую они держат.

·  Урожаи

Предположите кого-то, кто держится, эти акции в размере 1$ купили их, когда рыночная цена составляла 1,25$. Этот человек очевидно хотел бы знать фактическое возвращение на деньгах, которые он или она заплатил за акции. Это возвращение известно как урожай, и решено, выражая ценность денег дивиденда как процент от рыночной цены.

Ответьте на эти вопросы, основанные на тексте выше:

3.  Каковы функции фондовой биржи?

4.  Каковы были изменения в способе, которым бизнес выполнен на фондовой бирже?

4.6 Profits

Profit is a surplus. It is what remains from a firm’s receipts after all expenses of  production have been met. Profit, therefore, can be negative, since a firm can make a loss.

Profit is often described as a reward for taking risks. It is the prospect of making profits which encourages people to set up in business. If there were no possibly of making a profit, there would be no incentive for people to use their own savings and borrow other people’s in order to establish a business enterprise. Generally, people will only accept the risk of failure if there is a possibility of making profits.

There are several ways in which a firm’s profit may be measured.

·  Profit margins

The profit margin measures the profit on each unit sold. It is the difference between the cost price and the selling price. This difference is expressed as a percentage of the cost price or of the selling price.

·  Total profit

This is the difference between total revenue and total cost. It is this figure which is usually given in news items when companies publish their annual accounts. It can, however, give a misleading impression. For example, if Firm A declares an annual profit of 25 000 000 $ and Firm B declares an annual profit of 500 000$, it does not follow that Firm A is a much more efficient and successful company than Firm B. This is explained in the following section.

·  Profit as a percentage of the capital employed

In order to say whether the amount of profit earned by a company represents a good performance or a poor performance, this profit has to be compared with the sacrifices which have been made to earn that profit. One way of doing this is to use the total value of the capital employed by the firm. This consists of the money invested by shareholders, debenture holders and various financial institutions that have made loans to the company. The total profit may now be expressed as a percentage of the capital employed.

4.7 How a company distributes its income

This chapter has been concerned mainly with the ways in which a company obtains the money it requires for fixed and working capital. But what happens to the income which a company earns?

In the annual accounts published by public limited companies, this income is described as value added. Income or value added is not the same thing as a firm’s revenue. For example, if a firm bought shoes from a wholesaler at a price of 20$ a pair and sold them at a price of 25$, the income it earns from selling a pair of shoes is 5$, not 25$. Value added is equal to the total revenue from the company’s sales minus the value of goods and services it has bought from other firms.

Value added, therefore, is the income earned from the company’s own activities. Note that the word turnover is often used in company accounts to describe the total sales revenue.

Figure 4.4 shows how the income earned by one major UK company (ICI) was distributed in 1986.