FINANCE ASSIGNMENT

Please answer the questions below. Use either the Bloomberg terminals located at the Feliciano School of Business or other reputable sources such as finance.yahoo.com, morningstar.com or Wall Street Journal etc. for the financial data you use in your answers. You need to provide the references regarding the financial data you use to support your answers at the end of the finance portion of the term paper.

Questions:

Starting service to a new market, such as Havana, Cuba, is a major capital budgeting project for Southwest Airlines (ticker symbol: LUV). A project of this scale requires coordinated planning across all functions of a business that you are studying in your Integrated Core classes. Choose and discuss three items on the income statement and balance sheet that you think will be impacted by this new undertaking (a total of six items). Explain why you chose those particular items, and how those items are impacted by the marketing, management and operations decisions of the company.

Explain how the financial decisions regarding starting service to Cuba are related to management, marketing or operations decisions that the company must make (or has made)?

Choose and calculate three ratios for this company for the last two years. Make sure to select ratios that you think would be impacted by starting service to a new destination, and explain your reasoning. Identify two competitors of LUV and contrast the ratios. Explain why you selected those competitors. Describe how the decisions made by management, marketing and operations functions of the company can impact, and hopefully improve, these financial ratios.