Lou’s Crew Financial Statement Analysis
ACC-317: Intermediate Accounting
, Property, Plant, and Equipment- all Long-Term Assets
Property, plant, and equipment (PP&E) are central to a company’s long-term operating
capacity and financial profile. Owning long-term assets, such as property, plant, and equipment,
offers significant strategic advantages. These assets, typically held for more than a year, are
central to a company’s capacity to meet customer demand and sustain operations (Kieso et al.,
2022). Often among the largest items on the balance sheet, they are key drivers of cash
generation and, consequently, overall business performance (Kieso et al., 2022). By enabling
operational efficiency and higher productivity, long-term assets can lower costs, boost
profitability, and support sustained growth (Sharma, 2023).
When a company acquires a long-term asset, it records the item at historical cost (Kieso
et al., 2022). Historical cost encompasses all expenditures necessary to obtain the assets and
prepare it for its intended use (Kieso et al., 2022). Costs that create future economic benefits
are capitalized, while expenditures that merely maintain current operating levels are expensed
as incurred (Kieso et al., 2022). For property, plant, and equipment, historical cost typically
includes the purchase price, sales taxes, costs to transport the asset to its location, and
installation or preparation expenses required to make it operational (Kieso et al., 2022).
Companies should not write assets up from historical cost to fair value, as fair value is often
difficult to determine reliably in most circumstances (Kieso et al., 2022).
Depreciation Methods and Disposal’s
Depreciation spreads the cost of a long-lived asset over the period it provides benefits,
aligning expense recognition with how the asset is used and giving a clearer picture of
profitability. Under U.S. GAAP, common approaches include straight-line, declining (such as
double-declining) balance, sum-of-the-years’-digits, and units-of-production (Investopedia,
2022). Straight-line is the simplest and most widely used: you take the asset’s cost minus its
expected salvage value and allocate that evenly over its useful life. It works well when an asset
provides relatively uniform benefits each year (Investopedia, 2022). Declining balance methods
accelerate expense into earlier years by applying a fixed rate to the asset’s current book value,