For your Assignment (Financial Analysis paper) you will complete the Recommendations & Justifications and concluding thoughts using the "Financial Analysis-Template" file. Your "Recommendations & Justifications" need to be a minimum of 1,000 words and concluding thoughts should be 250 words minimum. Please read and use the instructions in the "Financial Analysis-Instructions" file. Both the "Financial Analysis-Template" file and the "Financial Analysis-Instructions" file are located under the "Updates and Handouts" thread.
You want to use the "Financial Analysis-Template" file as it separates each recommendation and keeps your paper organized and easy to read and grade.
Your work from your Unit 3-Assignment 2 will be under the "Executive Summary" and "SWOT" sections of the "Financial Analysis-Template".
The easiest way to include financial information into your final paper (which I highly recommend) is to use Yahoo's financial web site at http://finance.yahoo.com/ . You can find a wealth of financial information on your company and their competitors. Just go to http://finance.yahoo.com/ and type in the stock ticker of your chosen company in the "Get Quotes" box. Down on the left hand side under the "Company" heading, clock on "Key Statistics". It will bring up a wealth of financial information on your company. Also click on the "Competitors" and "Industry" headings under the "Company" heading to get more information ion competitors. You can also access all of the financial statements at the bottom left under the "Financials" heading.
You can also use the Financial Analysis Toolkit that is noted in the original Unit 3- Assignment 2 instructions if you want to help support your recommendations and justifications.
Also please do not copy and paste the financial statements (i.e. balance sheet, income statement, etc.) into your paper since that can be easily found on the financial web sites such as Yahoo and Google. All it does is clutter your paper. You can extract specific data from those financial statements to support your recommendations but copying and pasting the entire statements is not necessary.
FINANCIAL ANALYSIS: TEMPLATE
SWOT ANALYSIS:
RECOMMENDATIONS AND JUSTIFICATIONS:
1. RECOMMENDATION #1: Should the firm increase their capital expenditures to increase competitiveness? This will almost always be true but what segments of the business get the most capital allocated to them and why?
2. RECOMMENDATION #2: Should the firm increase growth by acquiring other companies for synergies or grow internally? Do they have the infrastructure to grow internally? If they get acquired by a competitor, how will the merger be integrated in regards to culture, overlapping businesses, etc.
3. RECOMMENDATION #3: Should the firm risk increasing their leverage (debt) to increase earnings and return on capital or keep the leverage the same (or even decrease it). If so, why and by how much.
4. RECOMMENDATION #4: Should they increase marketing spending? If so, by how much and where should it be allocated. Should online marketing spending and international marketing increase by more than print ads? Justify any additional spending that is recommended.
5. RECOMMENDATION #5: Should the firm increase/decrease R&D spending? If so, by how much. At what level do you feel your chose firm would be spending too much on R&D.
6. RECOMMENDATION #6: How should they go about controlling costs including labor, health care, and pension liabilities? (GM and Ford need help in this department).
7. RECOMMENDATION #7: Should the firm expand overseas? If so, which markets should be focused on first and why?
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF YOUR CHOSEN COMPANY