Assignment: Prepare and submit a comprehensive, written analysis of a company of your choosing applying the analytical concepts and techniques Steps 1 through 4 of the financial statement analysis process, as covered in Modules 1 through 8. The company selected should be a public, non-financial company from an industry that is not rate-regulated; that is, not a bank or public utility. Your analysis will include the calculation of ratios for the company for at least 3 years. Therefore, you will need to obtain (and adjust as necessary) financial statements for the company for at least 4 years. Your analysis will also include the calculation of ratios for a second, comparison company for at least 1 year. Therefore, you will need to obtain (and adjust as necessary) financial statements for the comparison company for at least 2 years.

Requirements: Your paper should be submitted in a Word document or pdf file and contain no more than 6 pages of written text. You can (and should) supplement your written text with tables and charts where you feel these will be helpful in clarifying your work. All tables and charts must be included in the document; do not submit a separate Excel file. These tables and charts do not count as part of the 6-page limit. Your paper may be organized in any way, but it must include the following elements:

1. Describe briefly the company, its industry and its business strategy. The description of the company and its industry should use Porters Five Forces framework introduced in Module 1.

2. Adjust the balance sheets and income statements for your company and the comparison company using the adjustments described in Modules 4 and 5 to the extent you feel that the adjustments are appropriate. For each adjustment you choose to make, explain why you chose to do so. If you choose not to make any of the standard adjustments (LIFO to FIFO, straight line to accelerated depreciation, and conversion of operating leases to capital), explain why you chose not to do so. Your paper should make clear how you calculated each adjustment.

3. Using the adjusted statements, prepare the common size and percent change financial statements for the company for at least 3 years, as described in Module 6.

4. Using the adjusted statements, calculate the following profitability and risk ratios, as defined in Modules 6, 7 and 8, for the company for at least 3 years and for the comparison company for at least one year. Your paper should make clear how you calculated each ratio. Do not calculate a particular ratio if it does not apply to the companyfor example, do not calculate inventory turnover if the company has no inventory or the amount of inventory is insignificant.

a. Calculate Return on Assets (ROA) or Return on Net Operating Assets (RNOA), and Return on Common Equity (ROCE)

b. Disaggregate ROA (or RNOA) and ROCE into their component parts, as described in Module 6.

c. Calculate the short-term liquidity ratios: Current Ratio, Quick Ratio, Operating Cash Flow to Current Liabilities, Working Capital Turnover Ratios, and Revenues to Cash Ratio.

d. Calculate the long-term solvency ratios: Debt Ratios, Interest Coverage Ratio, Operating Cash Flow to Total Liabilities Ratio e. Calculate any additional measures that you feel are appropriate for you firm. For example, if you are looking at a retail firm, you may want to calculate change in same store sales.

5. Summarize your overall assessment of the financial condition of your company, its strengths and its weaknesses, the effectiveness of its strategies, the appropriateness of its strategies, and its prospects for the future based upon:

a. the results of your common size, percent change and ratio calculations;

b. the trends in the ratios for your company over time;

c. your comparison of the ratios for your company to ratios for the comparison company;

d. your qualitative assessment of the quality of the earnings information presented in the companys financial statements; and e. any other issues raised in the companys MD&A and Notes to the Financial Statements.