Studying financial statements is an essential part of fundamental analysis, without which long-term investing through stock selection cannot be done. In this review, I will focus on the most important financial data of companies.
I will focus on the financial statements for the entire year, i.e. the Annual Reports. The reports are filed on the so-called Form 10-K, under which the annual report can also be found in the case of an American company. Annual reports are the most comprehensive and, I think, the most important in fundamental analysis. Annual reports are commonly found on company websites in the Investor Relations section. But an even easier way is to use sites that collect data from annual reports and make your job much easier. I'm going to use the Yahoo Finance site for now, but it's up to you to decide which one suits you. More tips on sites I and others and investors have provided here: 4 super useful sites that will make navigating financial statements easier.
Cost of Revenue - the amount of money it takes to generate revenue. This covers the costs involved in producing the product, marketing, distributing the product. Simply any cost that is directly related to the production and distribution of products or services. You can't say in general whether an increasing or decreasing trend of this metric is better. It depends on sales. A good sign is increasing sales and stagnant or decreasing cost of sales. After that, gross profit is increasing.