Financial Research Report Instructions:

Review of Financial Research Report:  This assignment is an analysis of a US publicly-traded company; its common stock could be a prospective investment.  Discuss the following topics:

Company Overview.  Conduct research and describe the company, its operations, locations, markets, and lines of business. Collect financial statements for the past three years, fiscal or calendar.

Ratio analysis. Perform trend and ratio analysis on current and fixed assets, current and long term liabilities, owner’s equity, sales revenues, EBIT, net income, and earnings per share. Project these trends for three years.
Address these 9 separate items:

1.      Current Assets

2.      Fixed Assets

3.      Current Liabilities

4.      Long-Term Liabilities

5.      Owner’s Equity

6.      Sales Revenues

7.      Earnings Before Interest and Taxes

8.      Net Income

9.      Earnings Per Share

Please note that to show a trend you should state each of the items for the past three fiscal years.  Also note that you will need to project these trends out for the next three years.  So in total you are stating the 9 items for 2008, 2009 and 2010, and then projecting the 9 items out for 2011, 2012 and 2013.  The forecasting method used should be stated in the project.  You may include separate graphs showing the historical figures and the forecasted figures.  If you are producing a series of graphs, please make sure to state the figures out for each of the years either inside or outside the graph’s information.

Stock price analysis. Research the company’s common stock price for the past five years.  Research the Standard & Poor’s Stock Market Index (S&P 500) for the past five years. Chart the price movement in the company’s common stock against the S&P price movement. State and support your opinion on the company’s common stock as an investment opportunity.

1.    Research the company’s common stock price for the past five years.  

(Additional Comments:  If you are including a graph, please make sure that the graph is labeled correctly and that the prices per share are visible.  If you are not providing a graph, you may want to build a chart showing the past five year-end closing price of the stock from 2006 to 2010.)

2.     Research the Standard & Poor’s Stock Market Index (S&P 500) for the past five years.

3.    Chart the price movement in the company’s common stock against the S&P price movement.

4.     State and support your opinion on the company’s common stock as an investment opportunity.  

You may defend your opinions with supporting reference material and/or analyst’s reports, but your own opinions are what are most valuable in this section of the project.