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I currently use Google Finance to do most of my stock screening and analysis. However I have recently started learning about cash flow statements and how to analyze them. The screenshot below shows a cash flow statement of Navios Maritime Partners L.P. (NMM) provided by Google Finance. I understand the basic principles of a cash flow statement as follows:

Operating Cash Flow - The cash produced from operations.

Investment Cash Flow - The sales resulting from assets.

Finance Cash Flow - The cash regarding liabilities.

(If you notice any flaw in my basic understanding, please inform me of the mistake.) However, when I look through the cash flow statements provided by Google Finance, I notice that some elements seem out of place.

These are my questions regarding the Google's cash flow statement shown in the screenshot below:

What is the difference between "Other Investing Cash Flow Items" and "Cash from Investing Activities" ? (Why are they not added together under one name?)

What is the difference between "Financing Cash Flow Items" and "Cash from Financing Activities" ? (Again, why are these not added together under one name?)

It seems like the three major elements of the cash flow statement should be cordoned off. Why are these different elements mixing? I can understand how investing cash flow could be affected by the "Financing Cash Flow Items" (you need to attain more liabilities to purchase more productive assets). However, shouldn't all financing cash flow items be included in the main "Cash from Financing Activities"?

Hopefully, my questions were clear. Please let me know if you need further clarification.

Cash Flow Statement from Google Finance for Navios Maritime Partners

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  • Did you ever clarify this topic for yourself?
    – jayarjo
    Feb 23, 2017 at 9:33

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I'm a big believer in pulling the quarterly and or annual statements and deriving your own analysis. The automated parsing systems at Google, Yahoo, and others are a good starting point and they'll let you generally compare various metrics of different companies or market segments. With that in mind, there are any number of reasons Google's scripts could have broken out or combined a couple of cash flow line items. If you're digging this deep in the weeds on this company you should pull the SEC filings and build out your own data.

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  • Have you actually encountered the case when Google Finance data was wrong? Or you simply suspect that it might be?
    – jayarjo
    Feb 23, 2017 at 9:31
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    @jayarjo, it's not about right and wrong. Right now Google and Yahoo don't even list the same P/E ratio for Apple (16.35 vs 16.39), it doesn't mean one of them is wrong. It just means they each took some line item and applied it differently or started rounding sooner, and this might be different than how you would have dealt with it. There is an entire industry built around security analysis because there isn't always an absolute, infallible, correct answer. If you're concerned to know what data was used to comprise a number, get the SEC filings and build it yourself.
    – quid
    Feb 23, 2017 at 23:20

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