Assets (Total)

How to read it

Total assets is the reported sum of everything on the asset side of the balance sheet: cash and investments, receivables, inventory, property and equipment, goodwill and other intangibles. It grows when the company raises money, retains profits, buys another business or builds up inventory and receivables, and it shrinks when it pays down debt, returns cash to shareholders, sells operations or writes assets down. Because it is a balance-sheet figure, stockrow shows it at the end of each quarter and each year, in millions in statement tables.

What is typical

The amount of assets a company needs depends on how it makes money. Banks, insurers, utilities and manufacturers carry large balance sheets relative to their sales, while software and service companies need far less. The line feeds Average Assets, Assets Growth, the ten-, five- and three-year total assets growth rates, Intangible Assets out of Total Assets and Total Debt To Total Assets; compare those measures with the sector medians rather than the raw total.

Pitfalls

Assets are mostly carried at historical cost, less depreciation, so the total can differ widely from what the assets would fetch today. Acquisitions add goodwill that can later be written off, and growth in the total says nothing on its own about whether it was paid for with debt or equity.