What is Defensive Stock: Definition & Meaning Explained

Deferred Tax Asset

A deferred tax asset is an item on a company’s financial statement that can be used to get tax relief, generally in the event of overpaying taxes or net losses that are carried forward.

Companies tend to deduct these overpayments or losses for accounting purposes and to reduce their overall taxable income. Common examples of deferred tax assets include:

Depreciation of fixed assets
Net financial loss
Bad debt

CANSLIM

CANSLIM is an acronym for a seven-step strategy to pick growth stocks by combining fundamental and technical analysis. Here’s the full form of CANSLIM:

Current quarterly Earnings Per Share (EPS): compare this fundamental indicator with the same figure from the previous quarter. If the figure grows (by 20% or more as a rule of thumb), the company is fundamentally strong.

Annual earnings: Compare this fundamental indicator from the previous years. If there’s year-on-year growth, the company is fundamentally strong. If the year-on-year growth is by 20-25%, even better.

New product or service: strong companies continue to innovate. That’s what this letter is about - checking if the company is continuously launching new products, services, or holding events.

Supply: a fundamentally strong business should have a good supply and demand when it comes to its goods, services, and stock. Executive supply of shares may reduce the value of the company - that’s why it should always be scarce in supply.

Leader: the company should be a leader in its own right, either in or across industries.

Institutional holding: a valuable company will have higher institutional ownership, the percentage of which should always be tracked.

Market trend: an investor must check whether the company or stock is going or against the trend by comparing it to broader indices.

Identifiable Asset

An identifiable asset is a tangible or intangible asset that be assigned a fair value at any point in time. This concept is important during acquisitions and mergers as not all assets on a company’s balance sheet can easily be valued.

Simple examlpeps of identifiable assets include machinery. You can easily identify machinery as a separate entity and assign it a value based on various factors.

Book Building

Book building is the process of determining the potential issue price of a financial instrument based on investor demand, generally during an IPO.

Book building is typically done by an underwriter (like an investment bank) who will invite institutional investors like hedge funds, mutual funds, and others to submit bids for the financial instrument.

These bids act as a range that the underwriter can use to fix a price that satisfies the company issuing the security and market participants.

Annual Earnings Change

An Annual Earnings Change is the difference between a company’s earnings from the present and previous fiscal year. The formula for annual earnings change is:

Current Fiscal Year Earnings - Previous Fiscal Year Earnings

Say for example a liquid nitrogen manufacturing company earned Rs. 50 crores in the current fiscal year and Rs. 29 crores in the previous fiscal year. Their annual earnings change will be:
Rs. 50 crores - Rs. 29 crores = Rs. 21 crores.

Defensive Stock