Overview
In preparation for your report in Project Two, you will need to calculate the financial ratios needed to determine your chosen business’s current financial health. Once you’ve calculated these ratios, the results will be used to analyze the business’s current financial position and help them make decisions about how to improve or maintain their financial health. Pay particular attention to working capital management. If liquidity is an issue, consider how the company will meet its short-term obligations.
Prompt
Using the Project Two Financial Formulas Spreadsheet spreadsheet and the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement from Mergent Online for your chosen company, calculate the financial ratios for the most recent fiscal quarter. Then, compare those ratios with the same ratios for the same fiscal quarter from one year prior in Mergent Online, and analyze your results.
Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:
- Financial Calculations: Calculate accurate financial ratios to assess the business’s current financial health. Specifically, calculate the following ratios:
- Working capital
- Current ratio
- Debt ratio
- Earnings per share
- Price/earnings ratio
- Total asset turnover ratio
- Financial leverage
- Net profit margin
- Return on assets
- Return on equity
- Fiscal Quarter Comparison: Using Mergent Online, summarize the differences between the results from your financial calculations of the most recent fiscal quarter and the results of the same financial calculations of the same fiscal quarter from a year before for your chosen business.
- For example, if the most recent fiscal quarter available is the 3rd quarter in 2020, then you will compare those results to the same financial calculations from the 3rd quarter in 2019.
- Comparison Analysis: Explain what the results of your calculations and your comparison indicate about the business’s current financial health, providing examples to support your explanation. You might consider the following questions:
- Do the results indicate the business is financially healthy or financially unhealthy? Which results indicate this?
- What might be the cause(s) of the business’s financial success or failure?
- Is more information needed to determine the business’s financial health? If so, which pieces of information might still be needed?
- Short-Term Financing: Explain how potential short-term financing sources could help the business raise needed funds to improve its financial health. Base your response on the business’s current financial information.
The following resources can help you complete this milestone:
Video: Mergent Online: Public Company Financials (4:46)
Watch this video from the Library to learn more about how to access and use Mergent Online. Although this video shows information on the ‘As Reported Currency’ page within the Company Financials tab, for the purposes of this course, the best option for locating financial data can be accessed by clicking on ‘Standardized’ beneath the ‘Company Financials’ tab. This will allow you to access the Standardized Annual Balance Sheet.
Shapiro Library FAQ: How Do I Cite a Company Profile From Mergent Online?
Use this resource to help answer any questions you have about citing from Mergent Online.
Guidelines for Submission
Your submission should be a 2 to 3 page Word document with 12-point Times New Roman font, double spacing, and one-inch margins. You must also submit the Project Two Financial Formulas spreadsheet (which you will fill in completely as part of your Project Two submission) and the Excel files for your downloaded balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement from Mergent Online.
| Project Two Milestone Two Rubric | |||||
| Criteria | Exemplary (100%) | Proficient (85%) | Needs Improvement (55%) | Not Evident (0%) | Value |
| Financial Calculations | N/A | Calculates accurate financial ratios to assess the business’s current financial health (100%) | Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include calculating more accurate financial ratios to assess the business’s current financial health (85%) | Does not attempt criterion (0%) | 21 |
| Fiscal Quarter Comparison | Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner (100%) | Summarizes the differences between the results from the financial calculations of the most recent fiscal quarter and the results of the same financial calculations of the same fiscal quarter from a year before for the chosen business (85%) | Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include summarizing more differences between the results from the financial calculations of the most recent fiscal quarter and the results of the same financial calculations of the same fiscal quarter from a year before for the chosen business (55%) | Does not attempt criterion (0%) | 21 |
| Comparison Analysis | Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner (100%) | Explains what the results of the calculations and the comparison indicate about the business’s current financial health, providing examples to support the explanation (85%) | Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include explaining in more detail what the results of the calculations and the comparison indicate about the business’s current financial health or providing more relevant examples to support the explanation (55%) | Does not attempt criterion (0%) | 22 |
| Short-Term Financing | Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner (100%) | Explains how potential short-term financing sources could help the business raise needed funds to improve its financial health and bases the response on the business’s current financial information (85%) | Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include explaining in more detail how potential short-term financing sources could help the business raise needed funds to improve its financial health, or basing the response on the business’s current financial information (55%) | Does not attempt criterion (0%) | 21 |
| Articulation of Response | Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner (100%) | Clearly conveys meaning with correct grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, demonstrating an understanding of audience and purpose (85%) | Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors in grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, negatively impacting readability (55%) | Submission has critical errors in grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, preventing understanding of ideas (0%) | 10 |
| Citations and Attributions | Uses citations for ideas requiring attribution, with few or no minor errors (100%) | Uses citations for ideas requiring attribution, with consistent minor errors (85%)r | Uses citations for ideas requiring attribution, with major errors (55%) | Does not use citations for ideas requiring attribution (0%) | 5 |
| Total: | 100% |
