Reference no: EM132333489

Executive Dashboard Assignment -

Conduct financial ratio analysis to understand a company's financial health and analyze ways to improve in areas revealed as being below industry average.

Course Note: In this competency you will find that you must have the ability to conduct financial ratio analysis to understand a company's financial health and analyze ways to improve in areas revealed as being below industry average.

The ultimate goal of a publicly held company is to increase its value over time. Investors in these corporations fund operations and growth by purchasing stock, and expect the stock's value to grow in return. Stock prices are based on future expectations. These expectations, in part, are derived from the analysis of a firm's past and present performance, that is, data present in a firm's various financial statements. Financial statements provide investors, analysts, and managers with valuable information regarding a firm's financial performance, which can be used for industry comparison and benchmarking purposes. As a business professional, you will likely participate to some extent in analyzing your firm's financial statements and integrating this analysis into your decision making.

Additionally, companies do not operate in a vacuum. To make prudent decisions, managers must not only understand the financial health of their own company but also the financial markets and institutions in which their company operates.

For this Work Product Assessment, you will examine various financial reports of a publicly traded company and conduct financial ratio analysis to gain a good understanding of its financial performance by creating an executive dashboard or "report card" based on comparison with industry ratios.

For this Assessment you will submit a Financial Ratio Excel Spreadsheet and a 2-3 page Memo, written following APA standards with proper academic support. You will compute various financial ratios, identify financial measures that reveal a snapshot of the financial health of a business, interpret financial ratios to appraise financial condition, and detect problems and limitations of ratio analysis using financial statements. It is important that you understand that the expectation is that you will use technology tools effectively and demonstrate Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving skills. Use critical-thinking and problem-solving skills to analyze professional issues and inform best practices.

There are two specific issues that arise when students are participating in this competency. One is that for some reason students like to use websites such as Investopedia and other commercial sites to support their claims. This is NOT appropriate! You must use ONLY the textbook, research articles published in academic journals, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and finally the website of the company you are analyzing. Therefore, in analyzing a company's financial statements you must use SEC filings (10 Q) as the resources to obtain financial statements.

As you study please keep the above in mind and if you have any questions about it please do not hesitate to ask.

Assignment Overview -

In this Work Product Assessment, you will examine various financial reports of a publicly traded company and conduct financial ratio analysis to demonstrate your ability to understand a company's financial health and analyze ways to improve in areas revealed as being below industry average.

Professional Skills: Written Communication, Technology, and Critical Thinking and Problem Solving are assessed in this Competency.

You are strongly encouraged to use the Academic Writing Expectations Checklist when completing this Assessment.

Access the following to complete this Assessment: Financial Ratio Excel Spreadsheet

Text: Fundamentals of Financial Management, Chapter 4, "Analysis of Financial Statements" Prompts.

Taking the role of a financial analyst within the company, prepare an executive dashboard (performance report) on a large, publicly traded company of your choice (e.g., Cisco, Walmart, IBM, Apple, etc.) by computing and comparing its ratios against the 11 industry average ratios listed in Problem 4-23 on page 129 of the text.

It is imperative for you to understand the use of good academic writing (visit the Walden Writing Center), use of online library for academic resources (not internet sources), SEC.gov for financial filings (not annual reports from a company website), and most importantly, your job is to do vetting of anything companies claim on their websites. The use of Wikipedia, Investopedia, financial related websites, blogs, etc. is not appropriate for this competency.

Use the provided Financial Ratio Excel Spreadsheet to show the computed financial ratios for your chosen company and industry averages. Prepare your performance report to show calculations for the 11 ratios listed on page 129, as well as a comparison of your computed ratios with industry averages. It is a good idea to be familiar with each industry's classification! A good place to start is to look for the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and look for the industry of your chosen company. Please notice how it is a US Government website, not a ".com". Then, visit the Walden University Library and access the IBIS World database in order to look for the appropriate industry standards. The comparisons, including a list of your computations in a table, should be added as an appendix to the memo described below and submitted as a separate Excel spreadsheet.

Write a memo (approximately 2-3 pages) to your supervisor explaining your findings and your recommendations for where improvements are needed to increase financial health. Be sure to Include the following:

• Areas within the company that are both above and below industry standards
• An explanation of the limitations of using ratio analysis
• The qualitative factors that play a role in improving the company's financial health

In the memo, suggest some specific ways in which the company can plan to improve below industry average ratio performance over time. Suggest annual targets over the next three years to catch up with or surpass industry averages. Explain why your recommendations should be effective.

Need to answer all questions.

Sub-Competency 1: Compute various financial ratios.

Learning Objective 1.1: Identify the ratios for chosen company and source(s) of data.

Learning Objective 1.2: Calculate the values for financial ratios.

Sub-Competency 2: Identify financial measures that reveal a snapshot of the financial health of a business.

Learning Objective 2.1: Analyze computations to determine which ratios are above their industry averages.

Learning Objective 2.2: Analyze computations to determine which ratios are below their industry averages.

Sub-Competency 3: Interpret financial ratios to appraise financial condition.

Learning Objective 3.1: Determine specific ways for a company to improve financial performance over time.

Learning Objective 3.2: Present rationales as to why recommendations for improvement in financial ratio performance will be effective.

Sub-Competency 4: Detect problems and limitations of ratio analysis using financial statements.

Learning Objective 4.1: Identify salient limitations of use of ratio analysis exclusively.

Learning Objective 4.2: Assess qualitative factors that may play important roles in improving financial performance to complement ratio analysis.

Attachment:- Executive Dashboard Assignment Files.rar