Assignment: Company Analysis
You will have time to work on this assignment in class.
Purpose
To analyze a company’s external business communication documents.
Overview
According to the Syllabus, meeting all requirements for an assignment will earn you a grade of B. The B grade indicates expected performance at the graduate level. To achieve a grade of B+ or better, your work should cover all main points of an assignment, demonstrate a clear and concise organized thought process, incorporate various levels of creativity, include additional resources and experiences into the assignment, and contain no noticeable grammatical, typographical, or spelling errors.
A grading rubric, which will be used by your professor, is included with each assignment. Carefully review each rubric to make sure you have addressed all the criteria before submitting your assignment. Most of the rubrics include the following general criteria in addition to the specific criteria for each assignment.
• Integrates established business communication principles.
At the graduate level, you must support your work with established principles in the field. Citations are required.
• Synthesizes relevant information and material to provide evidence of critical thought.
At the graduate level, you must demonstrate that you have the ability to combine various elements to form a coherent whole – not simply stating facts. You also must demonstrate that you have the ability to examine a situation from diverse perspectives before reaching a conclusion.
• Develops ideas with clarity and logic.
At the graduate level, you must demonstrate that you can present your message in a clear and logical manner and not have your message obscured by disorganized facts and information.
In this assignment you will be using a tool called turnitin.com. This tool allows you to check your paper for potential plagiarism before submitting your paper for a grade. Use the results of the originality report to modify your paper as needed before submitting.
Scenario: Your supervisor has asked you to explore a company that your organization is thinking about purchasing. Your job is to begin an initial analysis of the company. You will write a professional email to your supervisor that describes your findings.
Note: This is an individual assignment.
Action Items
1. Review Table 7.1 Tips for Effective Email Messages in your textbook.
2. Review the grading rubric for this assignment.
3. Go to the discussion topic, “Company Assignment”, and see which company your professor has assigned you to analyze for this assignment.
4. Read the two most recent annual reports of the company you have been assigned.
a. Go to the company’s website. Typically, the annual report will be stored on the Investor Relations page of the company’s website.
b. Locate and read the last two annual reports of the company as indicated.
c. Read other reports and press releases posted by the company.
5. Locate the Consolidated Statements of Income (also known as the Income Statement), Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows in the most current annual report. Print them out, or if the firm offers downloadable copies, download them and save to your computer.
Note: You will need the Consolidated Statements of Income for this assignment. Data from the Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows will be used in Write 2: Handout (in-class) .
6. Create a Microsoft ExcelTM worksheet to present the major portions of the firm’s Consolidated Statements of Income. See the sample provided. You are not simply to copy the sample – make your own worksheet and do your own formatting and computations. Format the Excel document to print in landscape view. See the sample for an example of how to set up the reports and the calculations you are to perform.
Note: You will likely note some extra items on the Consolidated Statements of Income – things that you do not know what to do with. Most of these are non-operating expenses or income that should be captured as such, following the sample provided. The items you are most concerned with will be clearly labeled as such.
7. Write a Word document containing a copy of your email to your supervisor that addresses the following items.
a. What is the tone of each report (its appearance, theme, look)? What feelings and impressions do you get from looking at the report?
b. Review the management letters and other front matter found in the beginning of the reports. What stands out? Can you draw any initial conclusions about the state of the business? What do the leaders have to say about their company?
c. What else is contained in the annual reports, and what is the significance of it?
d. Compare and contrast the two consolidated statements of income for the company. Consider the yearly operating performance and environmental circumstances (economy, market, trends, etc) that are readily apparent to you as an observer, and/or those mentioned specifically by the management of the organization.
e. What changes do you notice in tone and content from year to year?
f. What is your recommendation on if this company should be explored further for potential purchase by your organization? Include a rationale for your recommendation.
8. Check your document with grammarly.com. Modify your document as needed. Note: Instructions on how to access grammarly.com is available inSubmit To Grammarly.
9. Submit your document to turnitin.com (see MBA Toolbox). Use your Franklin email when setting up your account. View the tutorials on how to use the tool, especially how the Originality report works and how it can be used to improve your paper.
10. Read the Originality Report you receive from turnitin.com and make any modifications as needed to your document. This may include adding proper citations or better paraphrasing.
11. Include your Excel worksheet as an appendix to your Word document. There are several ways to do this. Here is just one method.
• Place your cursor where you would like to include the Excel worksheet into your Word document.
• Insert an “object” into your Word document at the appropriate location. b
• Select “Create from file” tab.
• A window will appear for you to search your file structure for your .xls or .xlsx file.
• The file will be inserted into your word document. You may need to resize the image to fit the page.
12. Include the grading rubric as an appendix to your document.
It should be in email format and should address the points as is listed below. I have short explanations in red.
Start with a short introduction about the research that you conducted on the company and say that you will be addressing the contents of the two annual reports to determine whether the company is worth purchasing.
Write a Word document containing a copy of your email to your supervisor that addresses the following items.
What is the tone of each report (its appearance, theme, look)? What feelings and impressions do you get from looking at the report?
Here you look at the two reports and determine how they looked different from each other. It could be that they changed the entire layout to make it look more presentable, or that they have new sections of interest to investors etc. Explain why you like one report better than teh other. or why you felt that there was not much change in both the reports
Review the management letters and other front matter found in the beginning of the reports. What stands out? Can you draw any initial conclusions about the state of the business? What do the leaders have to say about their company?
Here you need to look at the two reports and determine whether the tone of the chairman’s note and other notes by key leaders are positive in terms of how they performed, what were the key achievements, and find what was different from one report to the other.
What else is contained in the annual reports, and what is the significance of it?
List the key elements of the reports and say why they are important. For example the VW reports have extremely clear view of the financial charts that clearly match the balance sheets. This is an indication that the company want to give a better visual feel to their report as investors may not want to take a look at the entire balance sheet.
Compare and contrast the two consolidated statements of income for the company. Consider the yearly operating performance and environmental circumstances (economy, market, trends, etc) that are readily apparent to you as an observer, and/or those mentioned specifically by the management of the organization. – You would have done this comparison in the class and will have a clear understanding of the same. This will help you to answer the next question.
What changes do you notice in tone and content from year to year?
Refer to section above to address this question. For example the VW reports on the capture of market saw a decline from one year to the next. This needs to have a reason. It could have been that another car manufacturing company launched its operations in that region…
What is your recommendation on if this company should be explored further for potential purchase by your organization? Include a rationale for your recommendation.
Based on the analysis, you should be able to say whether you recommend to purchase or not to purchase and why….
The reason should be a solid one.. for example, the decline of foreign manufactured cars in the global market has seen a decline as the countries where there were high sales have begun to manufacture similar cars at cheaper rates, or whatever you deem fit based on your analysis. or if you want to purchase, then state why….
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