Very shortly I’d say that they are those expenses and income you made from your not operating related assets like inventory or receivables for an example or from payables to suppliers. 

The word “financial” normally refers to financing activity, i.e. loans, investments into shares or deposits etc. It’s the extra you do with your company’s funds or the extra you pay to get funds (interest paid for an example in case you’ve taken a loan). Something that may also be part of this group is currency translation differences (profits or losses) earned when dealing with foreign currencies.

Financial expenses and income on your income statement are the last group of results presented, just after the operating profit. You’ve presented your operating results, the very core results of your business and everything supporting it and now you show what’s the extra bit you do with your funds. After this there’s one more line called corporate income tax or something similar and then it’s the net profit for the year, the bottom line of your income statement.

When we talk about what investors monitor and what are their interests when it comes to one company’s financial statements, it’s usually operating profit or even EBITDA that is Earnings Before Interest Tax Depreciation and Amortization. So, as you can see, investors aren’t usually even interested in your financial expenses or income because this is something that’s extra and isn’t your main business results. With that in mind I would say that financial expenses and income is obviously something you should show separately but do place great care in what exactly you show as a part of your financial results.