Assignment:
Read: Hitchner: Chapters 5, 8, 9
Watch: Income Approach
Discussion Thread: Choose a Company
Choose a publicly traded company that is NOT a financial institution, bank, insurance company, real estate company, or similar. The company you choose should be one that you currently know very little about, and that you are pretty sure no one else in the class knows much about either. Need Assignment Help?
A good way to choose a company is to go to finance dot yahoo. In the search box, type in a letter or two (e.g., the first letter or two of your name). Click on the link of a few of the companies that appear and then, on the company page, click "Profile" in the row of links that appear under the stock price. Read the description and other information about the company to make sure that is in NOT a financial institution, bank, insurance company, real estate broker, or similar.
Note that your company choice is VERY IMPORTANT. This is the company that you will write about (and ultimately create a complete valuation estimate for) in the three major reports that you will write over the next few weeks in this class:
Company Report: Industry and Economic Analysis/Outlook
Company Report: Financial Statement and Company Risk Analysis
Company Report: Valuation Estimates and Recommendations
Be sure to pick a company for which you can find sufficient data to complete these assignments. You will need to have the company's two most recent annual reports (go to the company website and make sure that you can find these reports on the Investor Relations (or similar) page. Or search for "company name annual report" via an Internet search engine. If you cannot find the two most recent annual reports, choose a different company.
Also, I strongly recommend that you choose a company that made money (i.e., had positive net income) in the most recent year (and preferably in each of the past several years). For example, Lyft would be a poor choice because the company has never had a profitable year, so projecting future cash flows would be extremely difficult (if not impossible). Think of the 3 valuation approaches that you learned about this week.
Next, find and read at least two articles about your company. Then write a Discussion post about your company. Tell the class about your chosen company. Your post should include some or all of the following: company description, unique or interesting products or production processes, any interesting aspects of the company's history, where it is located, the year it started operations, a summary of its stock performance over the past few years, management structure, and similar.
So that everyone will know your chosen company (and so no one else chooses your same company), write the name of the company in the Subject Line of your Discussion post.
Discussion Assignment Instructions
Required to submit a thread of at least 450 words in response to the provided prompt for each forum. For each thread, you must support your assertions with at least two (2) scholarly/professional sources (note that Investopedia and Wikipedia are not scholarly/professional sources). Your sources MUST be cited at the end of your post using proper APA format.
In addition to your original thread, you must reply to at least two (2) classmates' threads. Each reply must be at least 250 words. Do not just say "good job" or "I learned something from your post." Replies are not a cheering exercise. Instead, your replies must be substantial, reflecting what you learned from reading the post, offering an extension, or correcting a mistake. Use what you learned in researching for your post (or knowledge gained from other classes or personal experience) to either supplement or critique the post you are writing about. You do not have to include any references for your replies.