Financial Statement Analysis Paper Individual Assignment

One basic method that an accountant can use to analyze the financial situation of a business is ratio analysis. This can be a useful tool no matter the type of legal structure of the business and regardless of whether or not ownership is public or private. To help assure the availability of the necessary data, though, this assignment will be focused solely on a publicly-traded company.

As an overview, you will choose a publicly traded company from a list provided at the end of this assignment. Locate the company's website, retrieve the latest company's annual report from that site, calculate specific ratios for the latest two fiscal years, and respond to a limited number of analysis questions.

Please note that this entails far more than finding pre-calculated ratios from a website such as Yahoo! Finance or Google Finance. If you desire, you can use such a site for a reasonableness check on the results of your calculations, but any such comparisons should not be part of your resulting paper. Also, you might not match exactly to their figures anyway since those may include quarterly updates.

The paper should be three-to-four double-spaced pages (not counting the cover page and bibliography) in Word doc using a standard font (11 or 12 point) and appropriate margins (e.g., no more than one-inch). APA formatting should be followed. The paper should include a section for the ratio calculations and a section to respond to questions. You should also include a cover page and a bibliography. 

 Your paper should be properly cited using APA referencing style. This means that the citation should be in a bibliography - and in the body of the paper if you refer to or directly quote any information, terms, etc. from others.

For the section showing the ratio calculations, provide appropriate details regarding the formula used, the source of the data, and the resulting calculations. Although you are certainly welcome and encouraged to use Excel to complete these tasks, copying and pasting from Excel into the Word document is discouraged unless it can be done in a manner that is cosmetically appropriate.

 The requirements for the ratio analysis section are:

1. Compute the following for each of the two most recent years:

• Profit Margin
• Return on Shareholders' Equity
• Current Ratio
• Interest Coverage Ratio

2. Document your work by including items such as:

• The website for the company
• The web page link for the annual report (or file name if a PDF is downloaded)
• The page number of the annual report (rather than the PDF) for each number used
• Appropriate details of the calculations

The questions that should be addressed in the second section of the paper are:

1. If you were an accountant for a potential vendor for this company, explain which of these ratios would be of the most interest to you. Would there also be a second ratio of interest to you?

2. If you were an accountant for a potential investor in this company, explain which of these ratios would be of the most interest to you. In your opinion, what other ratio or ratios beyond the ones listed above should also be considered in an investment context?

3. What is your overall opinion of this company based on the limited analysis completed via the four ratios? Feel free to mention any questions that you feel should still be considered in view of the ratios and/or the changes from one year to the next.

Please also consider these suggestions for your success on this assignment:

• If you choose a company from the list and have any trouble finding its website, the annual reports, or specific information, consider selecting a different company from the list instead.
• If the company has subsidiaries, be sure to use the consolidated financial statements.
• Be sure to use the financial statements rather than summaries elsewhere in the annual report.
• Lists of companies for the financial statement analysis individual assignment.

 List 1 -

Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Intuit Inc.

The Kroger Co.

Macy's Inc.

Zale Corporation

List 2 -

Dell Inc.

Family Dollar Stores Inc.

Kodiak Oil & Gas Corp.

Tractor Supply Company

Verizon Communications Inc.