Part Two is a company analysis. You will analyze the company you chose for your project.

Here are the requirements on the Part Two of your Project.

  1. Part Two is a company analysis. You will analyze the company you chose for your project.

 

  1. The first paragraph is an executive summary; you need to indicate: 1) which company you analyze in your paper. 2) what competitive advantages and disadvantages the company has in its value chain activities. 3) what competitive advantages and disadvantages your company has based on your financial ratio analysis of your company and its competitors. Again it may be easier to write this paragraph last.

 

  1. The first part of your paper is the value chain analysis. You need to: 1) Describe your company’s main products / services. 2) Identify the products’ / services’ suppliers, end users and if there is any distributors or retailers in between your company and the end users. 3) Identify the primary value chain activities of your company and describe what these activities consists of. 4) Indicate in which value chain activities your company has competitive advantages and explain why. 5) Indicate in which value chain activities your company has competitive disadvantages and explain why. When you talk about advantages and disadvantages, this should be relative to competitors you identify.

 

  1. The second part of your paper is the financial ratio analysis of your company and its competitor. You need to: Identify a competitor of your company and download the financial ratios of both your company and the competitor from our library’s database: Mergent Online. For each company, please download the financial ratios of the recent three years.  To download ratios:    Go to http://csulb.libguides.com/mergent.  2.  Log in with your library login.  3.  Enter your company name in the search box – sometimes multiple entities will show up – click the one that is your primary parent company.  4.  Click the “Company Financials” tab. 5. Click “Ratios” underneath the tabs.  6.  Finally, download the ratios using the excel link in the upper right.  Do this again for the other company.  THE TICKER FOR HP IS NOW “HPQ”.  Use this when searching for HP in Mergent.

 

  1. Discuss these ratios: Quick ratio, current ratio, inventory turnover, receivables turnover, total asset turnover, return on assets, and return on equity.  Remember our discussion about viewing changes over time and so forth.  Ideally for each ratio you should have a chart showing both companies, and then an explanation below it talking about what the ratio means, how it is changing over time, etc.  Compare and interpret the differences in the ratios of the two companies. Conclude what competitive advantages your company has over its competitor and what competitive disadvantages your company has over its competitor based on those ratios.

 

  1. Please write in full sentences, not in bullet points. USE SECTION HEADINGS.

 

  1. Other requirements include: 1) minimum of 5 pages, maximum of 8 pages plus references 2) double spaced, font size 12, 1-inch standard margin. 3) at least two references provided, including our library source. In order to do a good job, you may need to have more than two references. 4) Please provide correct and complete references.

 

  1. Remember our conversations about plagiarism. Feel free to discuss your issues with classmates, but write in your own voice, and come to your own conclusions.