Topic: Financial analysis accounting

Your assignment is to perform an investment analysis of a public company such as Home Depot (HD), Lowes (LOW), Walmart (WMT), etc.

This assignment requires that you explain why this company is a buy or a sell based on your analysis.  To do this, you should look up the company's latest annual reports (2012) which are easily found on the companies' websites in the Investor Relations section.  This report will discuss the recent economic events in the home improvement industry and how they have impacted the company.  A sample paper on another company is provided on Blackboard.  Do not use the sample company - Starbucks for your paper.

All your quantitative data in your analysis should come from financial statements (at least three years).  Use www.cnbc.com or http://finance.yahoo.com or company website.

With this information, write an analysis of the company's financial performance.  This report should be between 6 to 10 pages in length excluding title page, table of contents and Balance Sheets & Income Statements.  Place financial statements after references (Appendix).  The report may discuss any aspects that you believe have affected the company's performance.  You may also use other sources to back up your arguments; however, all financial data must come directly from the financial statements. Since this is primarily a written report, you should focus on explaining what the financial data mean, both in a comparative sense (vs industry averages or main competitor.   Value Line Investment Survey Handbook and Moody's (at a local library) have useful information on companies and industries.  If you cannot access them, it will not be a problem.

Your grade will be based on your ability to use financial statements and financial information to explain the overall performance of the company.  You may use any financial data and ratios that you believe are relevant.

A table of contents, introduction, conclusion, references and appendix should be included in the paper.  Tables and graphs can be placed in the appendix.  Grammatical and spelling mistakes will be taken into account.  Pages should be numbered and sub-headings should be shown.

There is an example in Course Materials on Starbucks.  Follow financial analysis with the ratios, trend & comparative analysis, tables & graphs, Du Pont analysis, interpretation of results and recommendations for improvement.  I will post examples on each in Announcements.  You can use Excel for graphing.  Search for tutorials atgoogle.com.

Include discussion of beta P/E ratio, EPS, PEG ratio, intrinsic value of a stock.  Use finance.yahoo.com orcnbc.com for information on your stock.  Show ratio analysis for each of three years.  Conduct common size statement analysis and interpret key differences in Balance Sheet and Income Statement.  Usecnbc.com or finance.yahoo.com for stock information.  Have a title page, table of contents, section headings such as Introduction, etc. and show references & citations.  Check APA.org for citation rules.  Show information such as Balance Sheet, Income Statement in an Appendix at back of paper.

Start work on paper in the meantime.  Show two decimal places for calculations including percentages.  As always, send me your questions at Q&A forum on Discussion Board.

The paper will be evaluated according to:

The quality of the content and composition of the written report.

The proper use of references.

Relevance to financial analysis.

Use of spreadsheets and graphs.

Guidelines-

The following are the guidelines the student must observe for the paper.

1. Outline of Structure and Content of Paper - A guide to the basic outline and organization of the paper in terms of allocation of space is as follows:

a. Title page

b. Table of Contents

c. Introduction (no more than 1 page)

d. Discussion and analysis of the topic (no more than 6 pages)

g. Conclusion (no more than 1 page)

h. References

i. Tables and Exhibits.

The student should use these outline sections as a guide to the organization of the paper.  Each section of the paper should be contiguous with the previous section.  Headings and subheadings should be appropriate to the discussion of the topic.  Do not start different sections, except the Table of Contents, and Bibliography, on different pages so that no significant blank space is left on a page.

3. Bibliography, References, and Citations - The student is required to provide a list of the references used for the paper.  There should be a minimum of 3 references.  The references can be either books or articles from magazines or financial periodicals.  All references listed on the bibliography should be ordered alphabetically and numbered.  For example:

1. Baker, Molly, "Technology Investors Fall Head Over Heels For Their New Love," The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 1995, p.1.

2. Bierwag, G.O., G.G. Kaufman, and A. Toevs, "duration: Its Development.........

For magazine articles the reference should appear as: Author name (or anonymous if no author identified), "title of article," name of magazine or periodical, date and page number(s).

Any reference obtained from an Internet site must be referenced by listing the URL.  Within the text of the paper, any use of ideas or concepts obtained from articles, papers or books in the bibliography should be referenced by author's last name  and year of publication.  The following is an example: [ Baker 1995].

4. Quotations - Please do not use direct quotes from the references.  The ideas from such references should be put in the student's own words and referenced appropriately.

5. The paper should be typed in a standard font such as Times New Roman font or the Arial font at 12 points.

6. Page Numbering, Data Tables, Charts or Graphs - Please number all pages of the main text of the paper starting with the introduction page.   Do not number the title page, the table of contents, the reference page(s) or any page used for tables or graphs.  All tables should be numbered with the headings "Table I, Table II, ...." Any charts or graphs should have the headings "Figure 1, Figure 2, ..." .

http://www.homedepot.com

Click on Investor Relations, then Financial Reports and click on Annual Reports.

http://www.lowes.com

Click on About Lowes, then Investors.  Click on Quick Links and then Lowes Annual Reports.

www.thecorporatelibrary.com

www.finpipe.com

www.finance-wise.com

www.moneycentral.msn.com

www.finance.yahoo.com

www.teachmefinance.com