Sector Diversification of Statements of Comprehensive Income Illustrated with the Example of Entities Listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange

Research background: The rules of preparing the statement of comprehensive income are included in the International Accounting Standard 1 “Presentation of Financial Statements” which gives a lot of freedom in the way information is presented in these documents. So the following question was asked whether the way of presenting information regarding results between enterprises representing the same industries manifests similarities or differences?

Purpose: The main aim of this paper is to verify whether despite the high level of flexibility given by IAS 1 in presenting information, the statements of comprehensive income prepared by entities belonging to the same sectors, manifest significant similarities.

Research methodology: The research covered the financial statements prepared for the financial years 2015–2017 and by almost 200 entities listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and representing 14 different industries. The method of descriptive statistics was used in the quantitative analysis.

Results: The results obtained allowed to show many similarities in statements drawn up by entities representing the same sectors concerning among others: the forms of drawing up this document, the variant of a statement, its internal construction and presentation of other comprehensive income.

Novelty: Research on sector differentiation of information in the statement of comprehensive income on a group of entities listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange has not been conducted yet.