Company selection - week – 1
Choose your term paper companies - two companies should be selected - and upload them via the Week 1
Dropbox titled "Company Selection." Your choices will be reviewed, and you will receive feedback and/or approval
for your choices. Your selections must be publicly traded companies that compete with one another, and I
encourage you to select the company you work for, or wish to work for, in order to learn more about the company
and the industry. Please ensure to include the ticker symbol with the company name to ensure that is publicly
traded on one of the stock exchanges. Ticker symbols can be found on Yahoo! Finance.
Course Project Horizontal Analysis – Week 2
Your outline should include (but is not limited to) the following.
I. Choice of Companies and an Overview of Their Operations and Industry – Briefly outline
what each company does and its industry. (5 points)
II. Discussion of Current Issues Impacting Financial Statements – Include any relevant
current event information, news that has affected financial statements, or world events that
could impact the businesses. Research will have to be done on this. Some good sources of
information include the most recent annual reports for each company (these can be found
online for all publicly-traded companies; utilize the most current year-end annual reports
available), Yahoo! Finance, the MSN Money website (this will provide current information on
your company and some ratio information), and various business magazines. You can find
the websites suggested under the Webliography tab in the course. (5 points)
III. Relevant Ratios and Discussion – List what ratios you think are relevant to your
companies and industry. Go to the Excel spreadsheet in Doc Sharing, review the ratios
listed under the ratio tab, and pick what you think may be relevant. In one to two
paragraphs, briefly discuss ten ratios you think may be important, and include ratios from
the different categories. The ratios will be automatically calculated on the spreadsheet
(please see section IV regarding this). (10 points)
IV. Excel Spreadsheet FinSAS.xls – Manually input the financial data for your company
under the input tab on the spreadsheet. You should insert numbers highlighted only in blue.
These numbers should be found in the company's most recent year-end annual reports
(utilize the most year-end numbers; the spreadsheet has it starting at 2008, but change the
year to 2009 and go five years historically from there to 2005), which can be obtained
online under your company choice. Complete a separate spreadsheet for each company.
Write that you completed the input for the spreadsheet for both companies and that the
spreadsheet works. To check this, once you input the data in the input tab only, check the
other tabs (ratio, vertical analysis) to ensure that you see the automated calculations. (20
points)
V. Bibliography
Written content and explanations can be completed in a separate (Word) document
Course Project Vertical Analysis – Week 3
Your outline should include (but is not limited to) the following.
I. Identification of Significant Asset Items, Liability Items, and Comments on Revenue and
Profitability – List specific issues that you think affect these items. For example, economic
factors, new product launches, and recent news developments can affect the items.
Information can be obtained from annual report write-ups, financial notes, and the Internet.
Briefly comment on how they affect financial numbers such as sales, profitability, costs,
revenue, and so forth. (10 points)
II. Relevant Ratios and Discussion of Your Findings of Vertical Analysis – Discuss briefly your
vertical analysis findings, which are calculated automatically on the spreadsheet under the
vertical analysis tab. Then, identify any key ratios that you think impact vertical analysis.
(10 points)
III. Excel Spreadsheet FinSAS.xlsx, Calculations of Vertical Ratio Analysis – This is a
separate tab under the project spreadsheet and will calculate automatically, based on what
you inserted in the input tab during Week 2. Ensure that it has calculated, and provide a
brief analysis of your findings. The spreadsheet does not need to be submitted this week;
just state that the spreadsheet is calculating correctly for each company. (20 points)
a. Bibliography
b. Other back material, as needed: detailed tables, extended quotations from which shorter
quotes are taken, and so forth.
Written content and explanations can be completed in a separate (Word) document
Course Project Final Ratio Analysis – Week 4
Your outline should include (but is not limited to) the following.
I. Explaining Business Objectives and the Effect of the Objectives on the Ratios – Briefly
highlight if the ratios meet the criteria of the business objectives. These objectives can be
found in the annual reports under CEO comments and business summaries. (10 points)
II. Identification of the Three Most Important Ratios for Your Companies and Support –
Include why you think these ratios are the most important; what do they indicate about the
financial health of each company? All ratios should be automatically calculated based on
your input sheet from Week 2. (10 points)
III. Computation of Relevant Ratios and Comparison to Industry Data – Verify that all ratios
have been automatically calculated on the spreadsheet. On a separate document, list the
ratios in comparison to the industry. Industry ratios can be found on various financial
websites. The list should be in a table format, showing Company A, Company B, and then
the industry ratio. (20 points)
a. Bibliography
b. Other back material, as needed: detailed tables, extended quotations from which shorter
quotes are taken, and so forth.
Written content and explanations can be completed in a separate (Word) document.
General Expectations for your Final Course Project Submission – Week 7
This week, you should integrate the work you did on the group project over the past six
weeks to create a Course Project, and submit it to the Dropbox under the Course Project tab
by Thursday of Week 7. A Word document, as well as the Excel document for each
company, must be submitted. Also, submit a spreadsheet for each company completed.
This week, you should also be sure that you answered the following: "Which company has
better financial ratios and why? What do the ratios indicate? Compare the financial ratios for
the latest year to the industry averages. Is each company above or below the industry
averages? Compare for each ratio." All this information should come from your previous
weeks' submissions. A suggestion is to include a section in the paper that responds to each
of these questions stated. A paper clearly outlined with separate sections generally reads
easier
Don't forget to cite your sources properly, both
parenthetically and in your bibliography or works cited.