General Mills Inc. – Understanding Financial Statements

a.) General Mills makes money through producing various food products and distributing them all over the world.

b.) The financial statements that are commonly prepared for external reporting purposes are the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Statement of Cash Flows. General Mills gives these statements a title of Consolidated Statements of Earnings, Consolidated Balance Sheets and Consolidated statements of Cash Flows. Consolidated means that General Mills is factoring in all of its subsidiaries into its aggregated accounting figures that are represented on these statements.

c.) They are required by the SEC to do financial statements quarterly. These quarterly reports …show more content…

Short Term Assets = 3,176/18,207 = 17.44% are short term assets

Long Term Assets = 15,031/18,207 = 82.56% are long term assets

Yes, this does seem appropriate for a company like General Mills that has been around for quite a long time, is global, and very financially stable. I would expect them to have more long term assets.

iii.) Intangible assets include patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade names, franchise licenses, government licenses, goodwill, and other items that lack physical substance but provide long-term benefits to the company. Goodwill represents the amount paid for something over book value. It is recorded as an asset to the company and is intangible but does have value.

The specific intangible assets General Mills might have are patents on their