Instructions:You will be conducting an analysis of the financial health of three companies. The first company is the one you selected for Integrated Project 1.(APPLE) Now, select two of this company's competitors.(MICROSOFT and GOOGLE) You will be comparing the following information for all three companies for the past two years. In your conclusions, you will determine the overall financial health of each company and identify which company is the most financially healthy and why. You will also provide investment advice. (Hints: Use tables to present most of the comparative information.

1. Identify the three companies.

a. Provide a link to the annual report used for each company

2. Capital Structure

a. List the total liabilities, both short and long term, and the total stockholders' equity for each year presented in your balance sheet.

b. Analyze/assess/discuss your findings.

3. Assets

a. Record the following weekly market activity for the company's stock for the previous year (any day such as Friday, Monday etc.). Make sure to record:

i. Closing price

ii.One source: search online for yahoo finance, click on search for news, symbols or companies, type in your company name and press enter (or click on) - follow instructions on web page, click on historical data, click on daily - change to weekly, click on apply, get close prices.

iii. Analyze, evaluate, and discuss the information

b. List the total of Property, Plant, and Equipment

i. List the total of all assets and total of current assets.

ii. Identify the method or methods used by your company to value the inventories.

1. List the total dollar value of the inventory.

2. Compute the percentage of inventories to total assets.

c. List the Cost of Goods Sold and the Gross Profit.

i. Calculate the percentage of Cost of Goods Sold to Net Sales and the percentage of Gross Profit to Net Sales.

d. Analyze/assess/discuss your findings.

4. Cash Flows

a. List the total for operating, investing, and financing cash flows from the report's statement of cash flows.

b. What method is used to prepare the cash flow statement, direct or indirect?

c. Analyze/assess/discuss your findings

5. Financial Ratio Analysis

a. Compute the following ratios:

i. Liquidity Ratios

i. Liquidity Ratios

1. Current Ratio

ii. Solvency Ratios

1. Debt-assets Ratio

iii. Profitability Ratios

1. Profit Margin

2. Return on Assets

3. Return on Owners' Equity

b. Analyze/assess/discuss your findings

6. Conclusions

a. How financially healthy are the companies? (Explain)

i. Which company is the most financially healthy? (Support your answer)

b. Which company (or companies) would you recommend to others as an investment? (Why or why not?)

i. Assume we have $50,000 to invest. Make recommendations for investing the money based on this analysis.