Assignment

Apple in 2013 Written Case Questions

In 2012, what is Apple's competitive advantage over its rivals?

To measure competitive advantage, you must assess the Apple's financial performance (in terms of accounting profit ability) and benchmark it to the industry average and other competitors. Develop your answer based upon standard metrics derived from the publicly available accounting data.Commonly used profitability metrics in strategic management are return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), return on invested capital (ROIC), and return on revenue (ROR). Utilize the attached template and examples to assist you in developing the analysis on which your answer is based.

APPLE CASE - FINANCIAL ANALYSIS TEMPLATES

If you have questions about the template provided for calculating Apple financials.You will be better off creating your own spreadsheet; the template is generic, meant as an example and doesn't fit the Apple case well. The embedded formulas will not work in some cases since they don't match Apple case data.

What we are looking for mainly is your ability to calculate a few important financial metrics, look at trends, compare those with competitors' metrics and interpret what those mean. Here are main metrics for you to focus on:

Gross Margin (Sales - same as "Revenue") minus Cost of Goods Sold
Return on Assets
Return on Equity
Inventory Turnover (COGS divided by average inventory)
Fixed Asset Turnover
Cash
Cash Turnover
Receivable days (Average accounts receivable divided by Sales X 365)
Debt : Equity
Debt : Assets
Price : Earnings

If you have not discovered it yet, investopdia.com is an excellent source of information on financial metrics, how to calculate them and what they mean.

Attachment:- Template.rar