The Annual Report Project (ARP) is intended to provide a real-world example of the accounting and financial reporting principles that you have
studied for the past three quarters. The specific objectives of the project are as follows:
- To illustrate the types of financial statement formats used by American corporations.
- To enable you to learn where to find key financial information on your company.
- To provide practice in the written communication of financial information, a skill that will be invaluable during your professional career.
1. Select a large publicly traded corporation and obtain a recent annual report (2011 or 2012, if possible). I have a small stock of recent annual reports, but you are also free to choose an alternative company and obtain the annual report yourself.
2. Familiarize yourself with the contents of the annual report. You certainly do not have to read it word for word-no one else does-but you
should know where to find the CEO's narrative, the auditor's report, the financial statements, and the notes to the financial statements.
3. Write a short narrative report that includes the information listed in the next section. Your grade on the project will reflect my perception of how well you address each issue, so make sure that your explanations and/or opinions are complete and well founded.
4. Your report should be prepared on a word processor. The report should be neatly prepared and should observe the general rules of good
grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Your report should be no shorter than 2 and no longer than 4 single spaced pages. Points will be detracted for failure to these requirements.
5. Your report should be turned in to me, in final form, no later than 5pm, Thursday, March 21, 2013. Late papers will automatically be
penalized 10 points.
6. Don't worry about citing sources. Your basic sources for most information will be the annual report and selected websites. However, do not copy sentences or sections of the annual report or the websites unless you put the material in quotations (I can always tell!). The entire report should be entirely your own masterpiece.