Final answer:
Investors use income statements to calculate the business's operating margin, analyze profitability, and assess overall financial health, which allows them to make informed investment decisions.
Step-by-step explanation:
Investors use the income statements of organizations for several crucial activities. These include:
- Calculating the business's operating margin, which is a measure of how efficiently a company is running and how profitable it is on a core business level.
- Analyzing the business's profitability over a specific period, seeing if the revenues exceed the expenses and by how much.
- Assessing the business's overall financial health which includes looking at various financial metrics that can be derived from the income statement.
These analyses help investors to make informed decisions about whether to invest, hold, or divest their shares in a company.