Investing experts view the balance sheet as a snapshot of a company's health at a certain point in time. It's a summary of how much a company owns in assets, owes in liabilities and the difference ...

COST's fortress-like balance sheet, soaring cash reserves and modest debt highlight its financial edge in retail.

Let us take up an example to understand the concept better. Below is the fixed assets schedule from Nestle's annual report for CY11. We can see three columns- gross block, depreciation and net block.