Project Details MICROSOFT CORP.

Write a report on the financial condition of Microsoft. The paper should be four to six pages. The bibliography and any financial statements and financial ratios are in addition to the six-page limit. You will want to include the trend analysis of Microsoft. You should also include in the appendix any additional data that you acquire from the Mergent and Value Line databases available from the Florida Tech library.

Focus on the financial health of Microsoft and the likelihood of achieving future success. Specifically, evaluate the Microsoft's capital structure, liquidity, profitability, and effective use of assets, solvency, and any other relevant factors. State your opinion on the Microsoft's short-term and long-term financial strength. Compare Microsoft to the industry average and/or its closest competitor. Use Mergent and Value Line to help in this discussion.

Please note that this is a financial analysis - present the "story" that your financial analysis discovered. Supplement the story with the past three years of stock price data of Microsoft and other outside news stories. You may want to examine analyst reports. There is a limit of six pages so you must think carefully about what information you want to include in your report. You may have as many pages as you wish in your appendix, but do not include data in appendix that is not referenced or discussed in text.

Some of the items from Mergent are competitors' calculated ratios. You may want to compare the ratios for your firm vs. the ratios of its competitors. For comparison purposes, use the ratios from Mergent so that there is not an issue with different time periods, as they use the last five quarters' data. You can also find some of the latest news about your firm.

Some of the items from Value Line are rankings for timeliness, financial strength, price growth persistence, safety, price stability, and earnings predictability. You can also see some of the latest news and projections for Microsoft. Again, you may want to look at its closest competitor.

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Make sure that you also use citations and references to show where the information originated. The last paragraph should give your recommendation and reasoning for buying the stock.

NOTE:

Your report MUST have at least four references in the bibliography (reference section). Of these one has to be Microsoft's website, annual report, or your source for the financial statements; one has to be Morningstar.com, where you accessed the bond data; one would be Yahoo Finance.com, the source for your stock information; and you should access either Mergent or Value Line (preferably both) from the library to gather comparative and analyst information. Some current business reports on your firm from The Wall Street Journal or reputable online sources would enhance your analysis.

Wikipedia is a self-reported data gathering site and as such is not acceptable as a cited source of information.