Charlie Topper operates Charlies Cricket Farm in Thomasville, Georgia. Charlies raises about 18 million crickets a month.
Question:
Charlie Topper operates Charlie’s Cricket Farm in Thomasville, Georgia. Charlie’s raises about 18 million crickets a month. Most are sold to pet stores at $ 12.60 for a box of 1,000 crickets. Pet stores sell the crickets for $ 0.05 to $ 0.10 each as live feed for reptiles.
Raising crickets requires a two- step process: incubation and brooding. In the first process, incubation, employees place cricket eggs on mounds of peat moss to hatch. In the second process, employees move the newly hatched crickets into large boxes filled with cardboard dividers. Depending on the desired size, the crickets spend approximately two weeks in brooding before being shipped to pet stores. In the brooding process, Charlie’s crickets consume about 16 tons of food and produce 12 tons of manure.
Topper has invested $ 450,000 in the cricket farm, and he had hoped to earn a 30% annual rate of return, which works out to a 2.5% monthly return on his investment. After looking at the farm’s bank balance, Topper fears he is not achieving this return. To get more accurate information on the farm’s performance, Topper bought new accountingsoftware that provides weighted- average process cost information. After Topper input the data, the software provided the following reports. However, Topper needs help interpreting these reports.
Topper does know that a unit of production is a box of 1,000 crickets. For example, in June’s report, the 6,000 physical units of beginning work- in- process inventory are 6,000 boxes ( each one of those boxes contains 1,000 immature crickets). The finished goods inventory is zero because the crickets ship out as soon as they reach the required size. Monthly operating expenses total $ 12,750 (in addition to the costs that follow).
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Requirements
Charlie Topper has the following questions about the farm’s performance during June:
1. What is the cost per box of crickets sold?
2. What is the gross profit per box?
3. How much operating income did Charlie’s Cricket Farm make in June?
4. What is the return on Topper’s investment of $ 450,000 for the month of June?  (Compute this as June’s operating income divided by Topper’s investment, expressed as a percentage.)
5. What monthly operating income would provide a 2.5% monthly rate of return? What price per box would Charlie’s Cricket Farm have had to charge in June to achieve a 2.5% monthly rate ofreturn?
Step by Step Answer:
Req 1 Cost per box for boxes completed and shipped out for immediate sale Cost of boxes completed an...View the full answer
