HIG - This is definitely a company that I can't analyze well. It's a financial, and there have been drastic fluctuations in its income in the past 4 years. The reason that I can't analyze financials is because I have no idea what they're holding. They might be holding some mortgage backed securities which have losses that are not properly written down. This means the balance sheet that I'm looking at may actually be wrong, which throws off many of the things I look at during analysis.
CSCO - CSCO took a 963m unusal expense in 2011. Its accounts receivables have doubled from 3.1bn in 2008 to 7.8bn in 2010. It has also been taking up more debt in the recent years. It still has pretty low capital expenditures compared to operating cash flow. While the numbers on the statements still show a viable company, its financial position definitely is not as strong as it was 2 years ago.
EK - The numbers are extremely unstable. In the past 4 years, the losses from 2 years really overshadow the earnings from the other 2 years. Shareholder equity has continued to drop, and is now at -1bn equity. The company is insolvent in the event of bankruptcy. Seeing as how its financial position has continued to deteriorate in the past 4 years, bankruptcy may very well be EK's fate. Even operating cash flows are negative now. My guess is that the unusual expenses combined with the decrease in revenue, are probably due to write-downs in inventory that it could not sell. This can be double checked in the 10K.
Not too sure what to make of this company. There are wild fluctuations in its revenues and expenses, and not in a good way. The 10 year summary in money.msn.com shows large fluctuations, even over a 10 year span. It looks as if the company is viable. However, such a company does not look like it can outperform the market. There are just too many years where it takes a loss or declines in income.