Benchmark – Interpreting Financial Statements

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Assessment Description

The purpose of this assignment is to employ accounting principles and relevant business practices to evaluate a company’s performance and financial position through a comparison to industry data.

Locate the Critical Thinking CT 10.4 problem at the end of Chapter 10 in the textbook. This will serve as the structure for your assignment. Begin by choosing two competing publicly traded companies from the list below.

  1. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo
  2. Walmart and Target
  3. Nike and Adidas

For the pair of companies selected, you will need to use each company’s stock symbol to locate the liquidity, solvency, and profitability ratios on the MSN Money website. As part of your research, you will need to identify each company’s stock symbol for the American market.

Review the competing companies’ ratios provided at the MSN Money website https://www.msn.com/en-us/moneywww.msn.com . Navigate to My Watchlist and enter the name of the company in the Quote Search. Identify and select the correct stock symbol.

Under the “Analysis” heading, use the Growth, Profitability, Price Ratios, Financial Health, Trading Statistics, and Management Effectiveness information to complete a 750-1,000 word comparison addressing the following:  

  1. Evaluate each company’s liquidity relative to its competitor using at least three ratios
  2. Evaluate each company’s solvency relative to its competitor using at least two ratios
  3. Evaluate each company’s profitability relative to its competitor using at least three ratios

Note: You will be assessed on your ability to evaluate each company’s performance based on the information provided at MSN Money. You do not need to calculate the ratios for individual companies or the industry averages.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.

Benchmark Information

This benchmark assignment assesses the following programmatic competencies:

BS Applied Management

1.2: Utilize financial statements to measure the fiscal performance of an organization.