Description
Purpose of Assignment
This activity helps students recognize the significant role accounting plays in providing financial information to management for decision making through the evaluation of financial statements. This experiential assignment requires students to use ratios to evaluate and analyze a company's liquidity, solvency, and profitability.
Assignment Steps
Resources: Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), University Library, Library resources: Company Directories and Financials
Tutorial help on Excel® and Word functions can be found on the Microsoft® Office website. There are also additional tutorials via the web offering support for Office products.
Select a publicly traded, U.S. corporation with which you are familiar or one where you currently work or have worked in the past.
Research the company on the Internet and download the Income Statement, Statement of Shareholders' Equity, Balance Sheet, and Statement of Cash Flows.
Develop a minimum 700-word examination of the financial statements and include the following:
- Determine the net income for the current fiscal year (FY). Is this income up or down from the prior year?
- Explain the relevance of changes in net income to investors.
- Determine the ending balance in shareholders' equity. Why would organizations such as labor unions be interested in this?
- Determine the total value of assets.
- Discuss the relevance of the total value of assets to potential creditors and why this is important.
- Compute the return on assets. Discuss the relative profitability of the company based on your results.
- Compute the working capital and current ratio. Evaluate the relative liquidity of the company based on your results.
- Compute the debt to assets ratio and the free cash flow for your company. Analyze the results and comment on the relative solvency of the company.
- Discuss how the financial statements are used in your current role or a position you would like to hold. How might these aid you in managerial decision making?
Show your work in Microsoft® Word or Excel®.
Complete calculations/computations using Microsoft® Word or Excel®.
Include the four financial statements along with your assignment.
Format your assignment consistent with APA guidelines.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
The Company I have Chosen is Union Pacific Railroad
Please follow the syllabus
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Explanation & Answer
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UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY
The union pacific railroad company is a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Corporation
which is located in the U.S and its main task is operating roads. The firm specifies in offering
transportation services to automotive products like automotive parts and vehicles, agricultural
products especially the products which are obtained from grains as well as chemicals. The
chemicals include fertilizers, plastics, industrial chemicals, as well as petroleum. In addition to
this, the firm also offers transportation services to items like biomass and coal. Industrial
products like construction materials, paper, lumber minerals as well as consumer products are
also transported by the corporation. The rail network of the corporation covers almost 32070
miles. The company therefore links Gulf Coast ports and Pacific Coast with the U.S gateways in
the eastern and Midwest. The company has its headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska and was formed
in the year 1862.
Financial statements of Railroad Corporation
2016 is considered as the current year for the company. The financial ended at 31st
December 2016. During this fiscal year, the net income for the corporation was $ 4233 million.
The net income for the period which ended 31st December 2015 was $4772 million. It therefore
shows there was some drop in the net income of the company from 2015 to 2016 by $539
million. The income of the company is seen to have dropped by almost 12% compared with the
previous years.
The above is not a good indication on the financial statues of the company. The main aim
of the business is to maximize its revenue. In this case, the revenue has dropped and therefore the
management of the company has to put strategies which are appropriate place so to ensure the
situation doesn’t worsen. The firm should also ensure that it realizes more revenue or try to
maintain a stable one for it to be stable in the market. The above indicates that there could be a
possible over investment of the company on current assets hence difficult to produce more
goods. The firm could also have spent a lot of its cash on expenses and therefore there is need for
the corporation to cut on its expenses so as to increase its revenues. The drop in revenue
indicates that the net income to the investors, which is dividends, will drop. It is because the firm
will be left with little amount to distribute to the shareholders after settling its obligations. It is
therefore not a good indicator to the potential investors wishing to invest in the company as they
will receive less returns on their investment.
The fiscal year for the company ended on 31st December 2016 and at this time, the
balance of shareholders equity amounted to $19932 million. The total shareholders’ equity in the
previous year was $20702 million. It is therefore seen that the shareholders equity for company
dropped by $770 million which is about 3.72% drop. It is not a good indicator of the financial
position of the company. The financial resources of the company have reduced and that is why
amount left for the shareholders has also reduced. Labor unions can be interested in the
shareholders equity because some of its members can also be members of company. They may
therefore be interested in the benefits that the firm offers like dividends. The labor unions may
also take part in the pension plans of the company and therefore, they are likely to be affected by
the drop in equity and that is why they have a lot of interest in shareholders’ equity. It is
expected that when the rice of stocks fall, the pension value also declines.
For the financial year of the company which ended at 31st December 2016, the assets
value resulted to $...