17. Which of the following is not an action that can help improve a company's credit rating? (The financial measures used in determining company credit ratings are discussed in the Help document associated with page 5 of the Camera & Drone Journal.)

Temporarily reduce annual dividend payments to shareholders and use the cash saved from lower dividend payments to help prepay 5-year and/or 10-year loans

Make sure the company pays off any 1-year loans (and temporarily avoids further use of 1-years loans) because 1-year loans are considered a current liability and thus reduce the company's current ratio

Strive to increase operating profits (higher operating profits boost the company's interest coverage ratio)

Place increased attention on expanding operations in all four geographic regions -- the resulting growth in sales and market share companywide will increase the company's market penetration and improve the company's financial standing in the eyes of creditors

Use a portion on the company's internal cash flows and new issues of common stock to prepay 5-year and/or 10-year loans

18. If a management team wishes to undertake efforts specifically aimed at helping the company meet or beat the investor-expected increases in the company's stock price in upcoming years, then it should pursue actions to

build the company's brand reputation; a strong, widely-known brand reputation is the biggest factor that drives the company's stock price upward.

outspend rivals on corporate social responsibility initiatives and charitable contributions, so as to encourage bigger numbers of investors who strongly support corporate social responsibility initiatives to purchase shares of the company's common stock.

minimize the company's annual dividend payments to shareholders.

increase total operating profits in all four geographic regions -- the resulting growth in operating profits will improve total net profit and help raise the EPS, driving the company's stock price upward.

use the cash in the company's retained earnings account to quickly repay bank loans and/or to repurchase shares of the company's stock.

20. A company's managers should almost always give serious consideration to making significant adjustments in its camera/drone strategies and competitive approaches when

the company's market share of drone sales is below 30% in each of the four geographic regions, its credit rating is below an A-, and its ROE is below 25%.

the company's market share is not the largest in all four geographic regions and its ROE and credit rating are also not the highest in the industry.

more than half of the companies in the industry are marketing 5 or more models of drones with a P/Q rating of 6-stars or higher.

so many other rival companies are pursuing a similar strategy that intensive competition in makes it quite difficult to earn profit margins big enough for every company competing with that strategy to meet the investor-expected targets for EPS, ROE, stock price, and image rating.

so many other rival companies are pursuing different strategies that the marketplace is just not big enough for every company to meet the investor-expected targets for EPS, ROE, stock price, and image rating.