This assignment involves researching a selected manufacturing company based primarily on their publicly available financial information, and then writing a report and preparing a brief PowerPoint presentation (with voice-over) discussing your findings. In addition to writing your own report, you are expected to view the presentations of five other classmates and document your review by writing a brief response to their posting.
Select your company by going to the choice link under the Research Assignment & Submissions tab of the course Moodle page, and clicking on the button next to the company you would like to research (each company can only be selected by one student, so it is first come, first served).
Your research will be written up in the form of a 3 to 5 page paper (not including references.) The paper should follow APA formatting guidelines (Times New Roman, 12pt font, double spaced, all margins 1”). This should be a well written, informative paper about the chosen company, structured around the research questions noted below.
The research summary section must be clearly marked with a visible heading and should encompass about 2/3 of the paper. The analysis section (your “take” on the information you reported in the summary section) must be clearly marked with a visible heading and should fill the remaining 1/3 of the paper. The reference list should be submitted to the separate reference-list dropbox and will be graded for accurate APA format.
Research Summary Section
The following is a list of questions to guide your research, but do not consider it a limiting or definitive list of topics for the research section. If you encounter interesting information as you research your company, feel free to “follow” that information and report on it. The objective of this project is for you to learn about this company and what they do well!
1. Obtain your company’s most recent Form 10-K filed with the SEC (see instructions below).
2. From the 10-K, read your company’s description of its business (Part I, Item I of the 10-K) and the opening paragraphs of Management’s Financial Discussion and Analysis (“MD&A”, Part II, Item 7 of the 10-K). These sections should provide you with an overview of your company. You do not need to read deeply into MD&A, where the company describes fluctuations in its results, etc. That might be relevant later, but now, you simply want to understand your company.
3. Based on this overview, briefly describe what your company does. What are its main products? How many different business “segments” does it have? Can you tell whether the different segments are managed in a centralized or a decentralized manner? Note any other information you found interesting about the company as a whole.
4. Now, dig into the numbers. Find the company’s financial statements (Part II, Item 8), specifically its Income Statement (or Statement of Operations, another common term. This is the statement that reports Net Income at the bottom). Make these computations:
• Use the “high-low” method described in chapter 2, Appendix 2A of our book to estimate what portion of your company’s expenses are fixed vs. variable.
You should have 3 years of income statements, so pick the 2 years with the highest and lowest revenue to do the “high-low” analysis, and use total operating expenses from those same two years for the analysis.
• Based on your estimate of the portion of expenses that are variable, compute your company’s contribution margin (described in Chapter 3) for the more recent year.
• Based on this result, compute your company’s operating leverage (also in Chapter 3) for that same year.
• Note overall trends in revenues and net income over the three year period. Are they increasing or decreasing? Is your company growing or shrinking? Does it appear healthy, or does it appear to be struggling? Provide your overall impression of trends.
• If you are a numbers geek, like me, feel free to comment on any other “interesting” data you find in the financial statements.
5. Immediately after your company’s financial statements, you should find a narrative entitled “Summary of Significant Accounting Policies” or something along those lines. Look through this note to see if there is a description of how they account for inventory (there should be), and see if the description helps you to understand whether they account for inventory using full absorption or variable costing (see chapter 5).
6. Comment on all of your findings from this financial analysis.
7. Now perform a more general search for articles or other resources that discuss your company, specifically with regard to why it is highly regarded as a manufacturer. Using summary comments or citations as appropriate, note what these other sources indicate about your company.
How to Find Your Company’s Form 10-K
• On a stock market website, find your company’s ticker symbol (3 or 4 letters)
• Go to the www.sec.gov website
• Under the “Filings” topic, click on the link to “Company Filings Search”
• In the “Company and Person Lookup” box, insert your company’s ticker symbol and click on the link to your company
• In the “Selected Filings” section on the right, you’ll see “10-K (annual reports) and 10-Q (quarterly reports)” – click here
• Scan through the listed filings and find the most recent 10-K Annual Report filing. Click on it. You may have to click on “View All 10-Ks and 10-Qs” to find it if it’s not immediately listed
• Now you should be in the 10-K. Look for the table of contents in order to find the sections I describe above. It may take a little looking around, but you should be able to find them.
Analysis Section
For the analysis, express your thoughts and ideas based on your research – not something you took from a source other than yourself. The analysis section must not include more research. It should be your thoughts and conclusions, bringing together the information you found in your research. Specifically, you should comment on why you believe your company is considered by IndustryWeek to be one of the top manufacturers in the US, and what you believe your company does particularly well. Also feel free to comment on other conclusions you draw, including any faults or shortcomings that you discover about your company.
Reference List
References can be from books, journals, trade magazines, websites, or newspapers. At a minimum, the reference list should include a) the company’s website, b) the company’s form 10k on the SEC website, and c) other sources that provided information which were used to obtain information provided in the research section of the paper. APA formatting should be used to create the reference list, using guidance from http://www.apastyle.org/.
References (examples)
Beatitudes, Inc. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.beatitudesinc.org
Blocher, E. J., Stout, D. E., Juras, P. E., & Cokins, G. (2016). Cost management: A strategic emphasis, (7th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill Education.
Idialu, E. E. (2013). Ensuring quality assurance in vocational education. Contemporary Issues in Education Research, 6(4), 431-438. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1073188
Madar, A. (2015). Implementation of total quality management case study: British Airways. Economic Sciences, 8(1), 125-133. Retrieved from http://webbut.unitbv.ro/Bulletin/Series%20V/BULETIN%20I%20PDF/16_Madar_A.pdf
Moyes, D., Cano-Kourouklis, M., & Scott, J. (2016). Testing the three Rs model of service quality. The TQM Journal, 28(3), 455-466. doi: 10.1108/TQM-02-2015-0026
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