Cracking the income statement code

Singapore

IN our previous column on March 14, we discussed the process of stock research. Today, we continue with a basic reading of the first financial statement investors tend to look at: the income statement.

The example we are using for this series is Yum Brands, the US-listed owner of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. We start from the statement on Page 51 of Yum's latest annual report, accessible from the US Securities and Exchange Commission's Edgar database.