evaluate and discuss whether you would be interested in being (i) an INVESTOR in this company and (ii) a LENDER to this company; provide relevant explanations, especially using information from the lowes 2021 and 2022 annual report.

Please use the 2021 and 2022 lowes annual report. Below I provided an example of an outline of a preferred way of answering the question. I would love this to be a good overview to get a greater understanding of lowes.

After evaluating the 2019 Annual Report/10-K filing from Mattel Inc., I would neither recommend investing in nor lending to this firm at this time. For an investor in common stock, there is little reason to invest in Mattel (symbol MAT). The company has not paid a dividend in either 2018 or 2019 and a note on their financial statement (SEC Filing / Mattel, Inc., 2020 pg76) indicated that Mattel entered into a covenant in Nov 2019 when it took on $600M worth of unsecured debt at 5.875% (the Indenture), that would not allow the firm to pay a dividend and this covenant also restricts Mattel's ability to borrow in the future. As a result, any common stock investor would have to rely on stock price appreciation alone to derive any value from this holding. MAT has incurred a net loss for the 3 years 2017-2019 of $1.0558, $533M, and $214M respectively resulting in a loss per share of common stock (negative EPS) of $3.07, $1.55, and $0.62 respectively (SEC Filing / Mattel, Inc., 2020 pg27). An optimist might say that the net losses have become smaller each of the last three years, but a pragmatist would say that the firm which creates goods which are highly elastic in demand (meaning these toys are not essential and if some structural change happens in the economy such as an over-all decline in consumer income, the consumer will abandon this good) is not well-positioned if the global economy is moving into a recession due to pandemic- related contractionary pressures. Mattel does have a significant amount of assets on its balance sheet though these assets did lower in value slightly from $5.238B at the end of 2018 to $5.3258 at the close of 2019. These assets include such intellectual property/brands as Fisher-Price, Hot-Wheels, Barbie, and the American Girl Doll. The value of these assets can vary with consumer sentiment and I suspect having brands that are so tied to traditional gender roles (example 'Hot Wheels' for boys and 'American Girl' for girls) may not be in line with the current and future generations expectations causing these brands to lose value. A note in the financial statements lists an asset impairment (reduction in asset value) charge for the American Girl line of $25.9M in 2019 (SEC Filing / Mattel, Inc., 2020 pg89)- Mattel is also holding a large amount of long-term debt in the amount of $2.8478. On the 2019 balance sheet Mattel has a long-term debt ratio of 127%. (Long Term Debt $2.8478 divided by total current assets $2.2488) and seems a bit high. In fact, the credit rating agency Moody's assigned a credit rating of B1 to a 2019 bond issuance of Mattel. Moody's cited "the company's high leverage and weak profitability after several years of operating challenges" (Moody's Assigns B1 Rating to Mattel's $250 Million Bonds; Outlook Stable, 2019) to justify this sub-par rating.I believe these financial issues alone are enough reasons to cause investors and lenders to look somewhere besides Mattel, however, there is one more issue that deserves to be raised. Mattel has a significant amount of pending litigation. Much of It is around allegations of security violations where it is alleged that officers of the company "knowingly made materially false and misleading statements and omissions to the public about Mattel's financial condition that caused investors to purchase Mattel stock at artificially inflated prices" (SEC Filing / Mattel, Inc., 2020 pg95). In addition to several of these class action lawsuits (one involving an internal whistleblower), there is a negligence class action based on the allegation that a Fisher-Price infant sleep accessory may have caused or contributed to the deaths and injuries of 32 children. In most of these pending actions, Mattel has vigorously denied the charges and states that it is impossible to make an accounting estimation of any future charge due to the uncertainty around the individual cases. In October 2019 Mattel announced their CFO, Joe Euteneuer, would be leaving the firm and that they had plans to restate earnings due to an on-going investigation from both the SEC and attorneys for the Southern District of New York into Mattel's accounting practices (Ziobro, 2020). This news combined with the negative financial metrics and other contributing factors described above should cause a prudent investor and/or lender to look to other firms with less risk