If you owned shares in a company, what information would be of particular interest to you?

[barfi1987]

Can anyone give me a clear explaination as am from this background but i have a project to do..

[buildersmate]

At a high level, P/E ratio and lowest highest prices of that share over the last 12 months.
At a more granular level it boild down to crawling through the company management accounts.
That's looking at it purely from an investment point of view.
People hold shares for different reasons - to get into the AGM for a kick-off.

[tamborine]

Business growth. Maximise income and minimise expense. Importantly, check the fat-cat (directors) salaries/expenses.

[sumo19]

You should first look at the price earnings ratio and dividend per share of the stock and compare this with other companies in the same sector. You could do this if you had the time etc. You can find the necessary data for this on the company accounts.

price earnings= price per share/earnings per share
dividend per share= dividends payable/ no. of shares issued.

See which company in the desired sector has the attractive looking results. You can find the P/E ratio in newspapers. And possibly the dividend per share.

You may also wish to look at investments the company is making which are likely to generate future wealth and plans for expansion. Look at historical share price to see how they fluctuate and what they may potentially be in the short term future, i.e are they on a downward slope. There are a huge number of things you can do to analyse a company's performance which may give useful information about whether to invest in a company.

Finally you may want to look at the market in which the firm is in; whether this market is growing or whether is it getting smaller, how many competitors are in the market etc.