Students are required to obtain two consecutive years of annual reports and 10-K Forms for two publicly-held corporation. Use the information in these two consecutive years of annual reports, to assess the financial health of each of the two companies and be able to give an investment recommendation.

The primary purpose of the project is for students to experience up to date "live" Financial Statements "in their natural habitat." For most users of financial statements, the natural habitat is the Annual report to the stock holders or the SEC Form 10-K report. For sound pedagogical reasons, accounting textbooks often use uncomplicated, make believe financial statements. These statements allow the text book author toisolatespecificissueswithoutconfusingthestudentwith(atthetime)extraneousissues.Theresult however is that students often are not exposed to the reality of actual financial statements. Students do not learn the fact that "real financial statements do not always appear neat and tidy as those illustrated inthetextbook.Realfinancialstatementsoftenuseterminologythatisunfamiliarandpresent information somewhat differently and in a more complex fashion than what the text book depicts. This project is designed to increase students' ability to apply all the lessons and tools of the financial analysis to actual financial statements. Such skill is one of the basic success factors in today's business world.

Step-by-step Guidance for the Course Project:Step 1: Choose any two publicly-held companies and get their Annual Reports.Step 2: Locate the four financial statements of each company (Statement of Financial Position, also known as the Balance Sheet, Statement of Income, Statement of Cash Flows, and Statement of Stockholders. Step3:Performacomprehensivefinancialanalysisfollowingtheanalysisgiveninthetextbook,andas outlined in the grading rubric. Step 4: Based on your analysis of step 3, make your own conclusion about each company's financial health. Support your conclusion by good reasoning and explanation.