You need to select one public company that has competitive advantages and explain why this company is better than its competitors.

Please select a company whose:

1) market cap is under 10 billion dollars(you can use this website for screening:https://finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=111&f=cap_midunder) and

2) annual 10-K report(for 2022) is publicly available on Edgar (https://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml).

• You need to use finance-based metrics such as gross margins or FCF.
• You may use other financial indicators such as P/E ratio or EPS.

Imagine that you are an individual investor; you need to select only one stock that you will keep investing in for at least until the next year. Explain why you believe this stock (or company) will increase to a higher degree than its competitors.

Nevertheless, the application of strategic management is more important.

• Do NOT select established companies, such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Tesla, Walmart, Nike, and Disney, because these companies are well known to have competitive advantages compared to others.

NB: Please include more content/figures/graphs in this paper.

Please answer all the questions below:

Question

1. Please describe your company briefly in your first paragraph.
2. What is this company's mission, vision, and goal?

Can you find them in the company's annual report?

If so, copy and paste the overall description of the company from its 10-K annual report.

1. What are the company's risk factors (please pick the top 3 most risky factors of this company)?

To answer this question, please visit the firm's annual report (10-K), read the Risk Factor section, and summarize what the company reported (Please don't pick the Covid factor because it affects almost all companies).

1. Please compare the company's risk factors published in its annual reports for 2022 and 2021.

Is there any change between the years?

Did they report more (or fewer) risk factors in 2022 than in 2021?

1. Who are this company's competitors?

Please find one or two by using two criteria: market commonality and resource similarity.

You have to identify at least two.

1. Please compare your company with the competitors based on financial metrics such as revenues, profits, revenue growth, profit growth, P/E, P/S, P/FCF, gross margin, operating margin, profit margin, Debt/Equity, Quick Ratio, and Current Ratio, ROE, and so on.

Does your company show better financial performance than the competitors?

If not, you should justify why your company is better than the competitors.

1. Did the company mention its competitors in their 10-k?

How often did the company use the word 'competition' and 'competitor' in its most recent 10-k? If not, how can you identify the company's competitor?

Please name other tools that you use to identify the company's competitors.

1. Please use any website traffic tools (e.g., SEMrush) to compare traffic between your company and the competitors.

Do you think using such a traffic measure is a good proxy for capturing the company's advantage?

1. Please use Google Trends to compare the popularity of your company versus its competitors (over the last 5 and 10 years).

Is your company more popular than its competitor? Is the gap between your company and its competitors widened or shortened? Do you think Google Trends is a good indicator of your company's potential value?

1. Please display your company's revenues and profits over the last five years (2018-2022) and compare them with those of the company's competitors.

Is your company getting better over time (you can ignore the numbers for the Year 2020 because of the covid effect..)?

Is your company growing faster than your competitor?

If not, why did you pick the company despite its slower growth rates compared to its competitors?

1. Please visualize the company's revenues/profit changes over the last five years (2018-2022) (via Excel or other software: X-axis: Year Y-axis: revenues/profits) and the competitors' ones.
2. Analyze the industry to which the company belongs.

Do you think this is a rising or declining industry? (Please give me numbers)

Do you think the incumbent can reap many benefits from this industry?

Why do you think so?

Please use Porter's Five Forces Competition model, and apply all the constructs of this model in answering the questions.

1. Do you think this companyhas valuable, rare, and non-imitable (VRIO) resources compared with its competitors? Why?

Please use Barney's VRIO model for your assessment.

1. Please explain why the company's competitor is hard to imitate your company's strategy. If the competitor can imitate the company's core value or strategy, that means your company does not have a competitive advantage. This is extremely important to ask whether your company's core competency, capabilities, and resources are imitable or not.
2. What business strategy do you think this company uses?

Cost leadership, differentiation, or a mix of both?

Do you think this company selects the best business strategy?

1. What about diversification?

Did this company have a single business or a diversified one?

Assess the company's diversification strategy based on the identity perspective.

1. Has the company acquired any company over the last five years?

If so, do you think it is a good strategy or not?

Please assess the company's M&A strategy.

1. What about corporate governance?

Do CEOs and other executives have a large proportion of the shares or not? Do you think it is a good signal?

Please check Yahoo Finance's "Holders" sections to get more information.

1. Does this company have any international strategy? If so, do you think this company has the right strategy for internationalization? If the company does not have any international strategy, what would be your suggestion for international businesses?
2. At which stage is the company located in the product life cycle (introduction? Growth? Shakeout? Maturity? Or Decline?)?

We know that it is vital for the company to be located at the growth stage for higher prices, as we learned in the course. Do you think this company is at the growth stage?

Do you think this company can create a new technology S-curve?

If so, please give me some evidence. If not, why do you still think this company's stock prices will go up, although this company is not at the growth stage?

Do you think this company is innovative?

Please give me some specific evidence if you think so.