Different industries, different business models, and different operating strategies all lead to different financial relationships on the balance sheet and income statement. Some companies may be more capital intensive and carry high amounts of fixed assets, while others actively engage in merger & acquisitions and may have significant amounts of goodwill. Commodity businesses often operate with razor-thin profit margins, while companies that offer a more differentiated product tend to generate higher margins. Not every characteristic of a companys strategy or business model is directly revealed in the financial statements, but patterns in the financial ratios do tend to emerge.

On the attached Excel spreadsheet are the common-size balance sheets and selected ratios for 12 companies representing widely different industries. Your assignment is to match each of the listed companies with the appropriate balance sheet/list of ratios. As you complete this task, you will need to think carefully about both industry and company characteristics and how these may be reflected in the financial statements and ratios.

The companies, industries, and brief description are as follows:

1. Nordstrom: Clothing Retailer/Department Store fashion specialty retail store offering a selection of shoes, clothing and accessories and an extensive range of services to make shopping fun and convenient.
2. Yahoo: Internet Technology global Internet communications, commerce, and media company offering a comprehensive branded network of communications tools on the web and mobile devices.
3. Kroger: Grocery Store operates grocery retail stores under a variety of banner names and include supermarkets, seamless digital shopping options, price-impact warehouse stores, and multi-department stores, which are similar to supercenters.
4. Singapore Airlines: Airline flag carrier of the Republic of Singapore that provides air transportation, engineering, pilot training, air charter, and tour wholesaling services. Airline combines premium customer service while maintaining lower costs than most budget carriers.
5. Kobe Steel: Steel Manufacturing one of the largest steelmakers which supplies steel parts to manufacturers of cars, planes, and trains around the world as well as a major supplier of aluminum and copper products.
6. Siemans: Electronics Manufacturing multinational conglomerate energy technology and manufacturing corporation. Focus on the areas of power generation and distribution, intelligent infrastructure for buildings and distributed energy systems, and automation and digitalization in the process and manufacturing industries.
7. Eli Lily: Pharmaceutical leading pharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and distribues diabetes, oncology, immunology, and neuroscience medicines.
8. Duke Energy: Electrical Utility one of the largest American electric power and natural gas holding company.
9. Coca Cola: Consumer Products manufactures, markets, and sells numerous beverage brands. Beverage products are available through a network of independent bottling partners, distributors, wholesalers as well as company operated bottle and distribution centers.
10. Deutche Bank: Commercial Bank leading provider of financial services to agencies, corporations, governments, private individuals and institutions.
11. IBM: Computer Technology & Consulting multinational technology company known for its hardware and software products including computers, servers, storage systems and networking equipment. It also provides consulting, technology and business services such as cloud computing, data analytics, and artificial intelligence.
12. CISCO: Computer Networks & Software designs, manufacturers, and sells Internet networking products and services including ethernet switches, which connect devices such as computers, laptops, routers, servers and printers to a local area network.

An initial strategy might be to try to identify the easiest match first. For example, two companies carry no inventories and only six companies conduct significant amounts of R & D. This approach will help you narrow down the remaining companies, which in turn will make those matches easier to complete.