The goal of the firm is to create value for the firm's owners (shareholders), meaning to maximize shareholder wealth by maximizing the price of the existing common stock. Good financial decisions will increase stock price, and poor financial decisions will lead to a decline in stock price.
To make good financial decisions and better manage change in organizations, leaders need to understand core concepts of finance including the big five principles, income statements, balance sheets, and key financial ratios. Having a grasp of these tools can help leaders in many types of organizations to make better decisions and to take a leading role in supporting organizational goals.
 Apply key finance concepts to a recent news story of your choosing.  Start by finding a recent news story from quality sources (CNBC, the WSJ, Yahoo finance, Regional Business News, Thompson Reuters Westlaw, scholarly articles, your textbook, etc). Your paper needs to be about a publicly traded company so that you can readily find their financials on Yahoo finance. You will know it is publicly traded (a corporation) if when you put the company name in the search bar in Yahoo finance you can find their ticker symbol (for example NFLX for Netflix).Include in your paper the following sections:
 
 

1. Brief introduction to the paper
    
2. Brief summary of the article you discovered
    
3. How the article relates to at least one of the big five principles — cash flow is what matters, money has time value, risk requires reward, market prices are generally right, and conflicts of interests cause agency problems
    
4. Review of key take-aways from the company's most recent:
   a. Income statement (see the video in the "Week 1" tab)
   b. Balance sheet (see the video in the "Week 1" tab)
   c. Quarterly report (do a web search to find the most recent quarterly report for a corporation - they will typically have an "investor relations" or "financials" page. You'll find a variety of documents such as a letter to shareholders, financial statement, PPT or PDF presentations, earnings release, and more).
   Tip: Example relevant details for this part may include whether there has been changes from prior year, how some numbers compare to competitors or industry norms, or any concerns about a key number

 

6. Calculation of a total of at least 4 ratios, and at least 2 different ones (current ratio, acid-test ratio, days in receivables, accounts receivable turnover, days in inventory, inventory turnover, operating return on assets, operating profit margin, total asset turnover, debt ratio, or price / earnings ratio). Be sure to cite where you found the numbers for your calculations and the formula you used.
Tip: comparing a ratio with a competitor, prior year, or industry norms makes for interesting discussion.
 

7. Brief conclusion
 

8. Reference page

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Applying Key Finance Concepts to Recent News Teslas Stock Split Brief Introduction This paper applies key finance concepts to a recent news story abou... View the full answer