Problem

Kate Snow just retired from a career with Walmart, cashing out a sizable retirement fund at the time of doing so. To start a second career, she is looking at the possi- bility of buying three different businesses. She has three years' historical financial statements for each business and has been pouring over the numbers. She was puzzled when she read the following state- ment in a book about small business financial management, "Be careful when looking at balance sheets to fully under- stand what you're looking at. In some respects balance sheets are very revealing, and in other respects they can be very deceiving." What do you think the author of the book meant by that statement?