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Prepare a Project Proposal that includes the nature of the project, the sources of information you plan to use, and the most important concepts and techniques to be applied.

The outline topics should include the following:

A brief summary of the company you have chosen, such as business lines, and its industry;
Information sources (e.g. industry studies, market share reports, financial statements, etc.);

The analyses you will include in your study. This will likely require a summary review of the material in later sections of the course, such as competitor analysis;

If you have access to, and permission to use, internal company documents, please discuss so in the outline.

You are required to complete a course project that reveals mastery in application of the strategic managerial accounting and performance management concepts emphasised in the course. This involves reporting on a specific organisation within an industry, analysing the firm’s competitive position (e.g., market position, cost competitiveness, market power, innovation, SWOT, etc.), its managerial accounting approach, and the non-financial performance metrics should be used in monitoring firm performance, all aligned with value creation for the chosen firm.

This project should be a formal business report that covers all elements of the strategic management process: mission statement, strategic goals, strategic objectives, actionable plans (if available, analyse the specific budget planning process used by the Firm; if not, search for relevant articles for the subject company and recommend a process that you believe is appropriate for the company), and performance monitoring processes employed by the Firm, including its board of directors. These processes and strategies are to be supported with managerial accounting and performance management concepts.

In selecting a company to analyze, first focus on information availability. If you work for the company, ensure that you can obtain the information required to do a proper job on this assignment. If you choose a company you do not work for, begin your search among larger public companies with ample information available. Company websites are often the best place to begin, in particular the investor relations site. Look for annual reports, quarterly reports, press releases, white papers, and other sources of information (e.g., public filings, such as for the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission at http://www.sec.gov./

Your tasks are to:

· Briefly describe the business of the Firm (i.e. industry segments, geographic service area, market position, and size as measured by revenues, employees, and market capitalisation). Describe the mission statement and strategic objectives of the Firm.
· Analyse the behaviour of expenses of the business, distinguishing between variable costs and fixed costs (or estimates thereof), describe the relationships between sales volume, costs, and profit. Estimate a break-even point for the Firm and support with relevant calculations and discussion.

· Discuss the level of the Firm’s operating leverage.

· Assess the budgeting process and procedures for the Firm, bearing in mind the context of the business and its characteristics. Identify methods employed for budgeting, managerial reporting, and control, and make recommendations for improvement. Justify your recommendations.

· Summarise the Firm’s performance over the past five years in terms of sales and earnings growth, return on equity, return for shareholders, and non-financial performance measures (e.g. market share, recognition, customer satisfaction).

· Analyse the fixed capital needs (i.e. capital expenditures) of the company, and discuss significant capital projects, how they fit with the strategic goals of the Firm. Evaluate risks associated with major capital projects and suggest risk mitigation strategies. Justify your suggestions.

· Briefly profile two or three key competitors and analyse the basis for competition (e.g., is it cost? Innovation? Capital intensity? Branding?). Compare the Firm with these key competitors on key performance metrics (e.g., revenue growth, profit margins, return on equity, financial leverage, receivables turnover, payables turnover, asset turnover, operating costs, market share, market share growth, etc.). Identify areas where the Firm may outperform or underperform the peer group, and suggest improvements for weaknesses.

· Design a Balanced Scorecard for the Firm.

This project should follow a structured approach and should be prepared and presented as a professional business report.

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Reid Wolff
Reid WolffLv2
28 Sep 2019

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Company Project

Purpose: The goal of the company project is for students to learn how to apply the theoretical concepts presented in class to analysis of a publicly-traded company. Each student will complete an in-depth examination of a company’s governance, operations, financing and strategy.

Data: Students will be responsible for gathering the data for their company from a variety of sources including Yahoo! Finance, SEC filings and other internet sites. Students should use the most recent data available.

Content: Topics that will be included in the report will be assigned on a week-by-week basis and follow the theoretical discussions in class. Students should work on the project as assigned in order to keep from falling behind schedule. Students may wish to include certain additional topics, beyond those assigned, to enhance their reports.

Perspective: Students should assume they are taking the role of a consultant in completing their company project. Therefore, the final work product should be a formal report expected to be read by a client who has requested an outside assessment of the firm’s management practices.

Format: The report should include ten chapters. Chapter 1 is a brief introduction of the company, which includes information on the background of the company’s lines of business and the exchange on which the company is traded. Chapters 2-9 will contain analyses of the company’s management practices based on applications of the eight topics listed in the Tentative Class Schedule (i.e., the eight chapters of the text that will be covered in class). Chapter 2 will analyze corporate governance, Chapter 3 will examine the firm’s policies relating to dividends and stock repurchases, etc. Chapter 10 will present a summary of and conclusions from the analysis.

Length: There is no prescribed length for the report. As it is a consultant’s report, it should be as long as necessary to provide the client with useful, actionable results with respect to the topics covered.

Chapter 13 and 14

Corporate governance

Dividends and stock repurchases

Dividends and stock Chapter 14

repurchases (cont.)

Capital structure Chapter 15

Working capital management Chapter 16

Leasing and hybrid securities Chapters 19 and 20

Mergers Chapter 22

Bankruptcy, reorganization and Chapter 24

liquidation

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Discussion 2: Water Cooler Discussion on Leadership Styles

The water cooler has become a symbol in business life. Like any common gathering place in an office slightly removed from the cubicles and desks, the water cooler is a place to share information, both casual and vital, and to build networks with colleagues who you do not necessarily see or interact with every day. The water cooler discussion activity this week will help you get into the practice of looking beyond your metaphorical cubicle to seek out topical news stories and ideas and analyze them with your Instructor and colleagues. Familiarity with current trends, topics, and events is an important element of your participation and success in the business world and your MBA program.

For your Discussion this week, research the Business Source Complete database in the Walden Library for interesting and compelling articles on the topic of leadership styles. For assistance on how to use the Walden Library, consult the document Walden University Library Tips and Tricks, which can be located by clicking on the Learning Support Docs link in the course navigation menu in the online classroom. Then, select an article from the library that resonates with you. You need to access the full text of the article, and it should be more than 2 pages in length. Do not worry if the article you select has a complicated research design (e.g., describes complex quantitative research techniques), as usually the introduction and summary conclusion pages have interesting concepts and findings to discuss.

Most of the articles you find in Business Source Complete will provide a PDF of the article. For the water cooler activity, it is preferable to attach the PDF of the article to your post. If the article you find in Business Source Complete only provides the full text as an HTML file, paste the HTML file in a Word document and attach it to your post.

Post by Day 5 the author(s) and title of the article on leadership style(s) that you found interesting. Provide a paraphrased summary, in your own words, of what the article says about leadership style(s), why you chose it, and what you learned from it, relative to what you have studied this week and throughout the course to date about leadership in business settings. Include the article as attachment to your post.

Please write a 250 word response to the below discussion. Please provide 2 scholarly sources.

The efficient market hypothesis states that share prices reflect all relevant information, and that it is impossible to beat the market or achieve above-average returns on a sustainable basis. There are many critics of this theory, such as behavioral economists, who believe in inherent market inefficiencies. The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) states that securities are very efficient in reflecting the truth about a stock. In other words, when new information is available about a stock, it is incorporated into the price adjustments of the stock quickly enough to reflect the actual state of the market (Malkiel, 2003). EHM debunks the idea that financial analysis and forecasting are useful tools to shop for stocks. In other words, because securities accurately reflect the status of that stock, it is not possible to use financial analysis to find an undervalued stock or predict trends in the market in order to buy low with the future insight to sell high. There are three levels, or degrees, of the efficient market hypothesis: weak, semi-strong, and strong. The weak form assumes that current stock prices reflect all available information, and that past price performance has no relationship with the future. In other words, this form of the hypothesis says that using technical analysis to achieve exceptional returns is impossible. The semi-strong form says that stock prices have factored in all available public information. Because of this, it's impossible to use fundamental analysis to choose stocks that will beat the market's returns. Finally, the strong form of the efficient market hypothesis says that all information, public as well as private, is incorporated into current stock prices. This form of the efficient market hypothesis essentially assumes a perfect market, and isn't plausible when there are insider trading restrictions (VanBergen, 2011). Yes, I believe that financial statement analysis can provide a significant advantage to an investor. The key is that empirical analysis, specifically statistical models aimed at forecasting future trends based on historical data, are simply another tool to be taken in to account. They are not a single source of the definitive answer. But, through the use of high power computing and mathematically rigorous modeling tools, forecasting is a powerful tool to provide additional insight to decision makers to include the financial industry. In support of my position, (Malkiel 2003) reports the findings of several empirical studies which demonstrate positive statistical correlations in short-run return analysis and the successful prediction of up to 40% of variation in long-term return analysis through time-series statistical models, which are able to take into account seasonal fluctuations (Malkiel 2003). One experimental study demonstrated with statistical significance that the Ohlson model provides predictive ability for future stock price movements (Lee, Chen and Tsai, 2014).

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