The second step to gauge the value of a company is to determine the sum of all cash that has been invested in a company over its life without regard to financing form or accounting name. We call this Invested Capital.
DTAs artificially raise reported assets and do not help generate operating profit while DTLs are like a source of interest-free financing. We remove the impact of DTAs and DTLs from our calculation of invested capital to ensure the more accurate measure of a firm’s return on invested capital (ROIC).
Citigroup is running out of accounting tricks and the stock will continue its slide as investors recognize the company is not as profitable as it wants investors to believe. Our analysis of the financial footnotes of more than 50,000 annual reports means we know more about which companies have the naughtiest and the nicest accounting. And Citigroup is definitely on the naughty list.