Corporation fact-finding mission

This week’s discussion board will be a “corporation” fact-finding mission.  The purpose of this exercise is to start your research on their company project.   This is a research and report discussion forum based on your initial financial research of your corporation.

Your professor will provide you with your assigned corporation by the beginning of Week 1.  Before you start this exercise, write down what you know about your company.

You will be required to:

1. Use theMergent Intellect (Links to an external site.) and Mergent Archives (Links to an external site.) library business resources and/or other web sources to supplement the annual report that you uploaded in Week 1.
2. Look up your publicly-traded company.
3. You will share several paragraphs discussing the basic characteristics of your company in an original post, and reply to your classmates on their findings.
4. Insert your company name as the title of your thread.

Your original post is due by Thursday of Week 2 at 11:59 PM (EST).  Your original post must be submitted before you will be able to see other posts.  Be sure to include pages of the required minimum length discussing all the items below for full credit on your initial post. Insert the name of your assigned corporation as the title of your thread.

In your original post, provide reports of the stated required length on each of the following items. Include references.  The responses to each of these questions can be re-applied within the appropriate sections of your final paper, so thorough work is encouraged: 

1. Provide one full APA page of text (minimum) that identifies your company, its primary products, markets, subsidiaries, risks, and any special highlights about your assigned corporation.  This is also required for the Corporate Description of your paper.
2. What is your assigned corporation’s current condition of the ’right-hand’ side of the balance sheet in terms of total debt to total equity of the firm?  In other words, provide and analyze the debt to equity ratio.  This is a required part of the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) portion of your paper.  Provide one half-page APA text (minimum).
3. Provide one full APA page of text (minimum) that discusses the following items.  (Note: One APA page total, not one APA page for each bullet.)  This is also required for the Financial Statement Trend Assessment in your final paper.

• Skim through your firm’s most recent annual report.  What are your impressions on the company’s income statement trends and balance sheet trends?  Report on at least one interesting finding from each of the income statement trends and balance sheet trends.
• List some interesting financial facts about your company.  This could be related to revenue, income, taxes paid, or any of the financial aspects examined in Chapters 2 and 3.
• Having done parts (a) and (b), now compare what you now know to what you knew about your company prior to this research.