** Company is TARGET

the primary question to answer is: will THE COMPANY be financially viable over the next two to three years, and which steps should be taken to improve its financial stability?

-1Intro The paper should begin with a short introduction, explains the purpose of the paper, and provides an overview of the contents that follow (one short paragraph).

-2 Ratio analysis.

In this part of the project you will complete ratio analysis of TARGET. Please remember that you are the financial analyst of THE COMPANY and should prepare the report to be read by the chairman (CEO) of THE COMPANY.

1. Collect the following ratios for TARGET for the last 3 years. Present the ratios as the table(s) in your project. Create graphs for some ratios on your choice to show trends. If you are using published ratios you must cite the source.

• Liquidity ratios: current ratio, quick ratio
• Operating efficiency ratios: Days of Sales in Inventory, Accounts Receivable Turnover, Inventory Turnover, Total Assets Turnover
• Profitability ratios: Gross Profit Margin, Operating Profit Margin, Net Profit Margin
• Debt-to-Equity, Time Interest Earned (TIE), Financial leverage (also called Equity Multiplier)
• ROA, ROE

Liquidity ratios, Debt-to-Equity, and Financial leverage ratios are available onwww.morningstar.com> type the stock symbol in the Search window to get into the company's page. Click on Valuation and scroll down to Key Statistics > choose Financial Healthtab.

Operating efficiency ratios, Profitability ratios, ROE, and ROA ratios are available onwww.morningstar.com> type the stock symbol in the Search window to get into the company's page. Click on Valuation and scroll down to Key Statistics > choose Operating and Efficiencytab.

c) At least three pages of analysis of the ratio results that you collected. In your analysis you should answer the following questions:

• How liquid is the company?
• Analyze operating efficiency ratios. What important information does this analysis provide?
• Is management generating a substantial profit on the company's assets?
• How is the company financing its assets? Discuss how much risk is associated with the financial structure the company.
• Have the company's ROA and ROE changed over the last three years? What was the main factor that influenced this change? To answer this question, apply DuPont analysis and three factors of the DuPont formula: Net profit margin, asset turnover, financial leverage. What ratio(s) has (have) been changed mostly over these three years and why?

-3- Develop a specific recommendation, with supporting rationale, as to whether the assigned company's recent results in ratio analysis is of sufficient financial strength, will THE COMPANY be financially sustainable over the next several years, and which steps should be done to improve its financial stability? If the management of the company would like to improve the company's financial performance, what should the management of THE COMPANY do? Your recommendations should be based on the results of your analysis inthe project.

-4- Reflection - the student should have a paragraph in their own words reflecting on specifically what they learned from the assignment and how they think they could apply what they learned in the workplace.