Finance

Intuitively describe the method of NPV. Intuitively describe the method of IRR. Intuitively describe the method of MIRR. If you can only choose one method for capital budgeting, which one would you choose, NPV, IRR or MIRR?

Negotiable Instruments Before beginning work on this week’s discussion forum, please review the link “Doing Discussion Questions Right,” the expanded grading rubric for the forum and any specific instructions for this week’s topic. The discussion assignment consists of two parts. Select one of the questions for Part 1 and answer Part 2. By the due date assigned, submit your answers to Part 1 and Part 2 to this Discussion Area. Post the answers to both parts in one thread. Label your answers Part 1 and Part 2, but do not repeat the scenario text in your responses. Start reviewing and responding to your classmates as early in the week as possible. You should review and critique the work of other students as outlined in the expanded rubric by the end of the week. Discussion Question Part 1 Select one of the scenarios listed below and explain the best solution for each. Include comments related to any ethical issues that arise. You should locate at least one scholarly source from the SUO Library or one case that has been decided or is currently pending to support your answer. Scenario 1 – Liability on Negotiable Instruments Porter Cable hired a bookkeeper, Gerald Smith, and gave him general authority to issue company checks drawn on First Bank so Smith could pay employees’ wages and other company bills. Smith decided to cheat his employers out of $9,500 by issuing a check payable to Timkin Bearings, one of the suppliers of bearings. Smith does not intend for Timkin to receive any of the money, nor is Timkin entitled to the payment. Smith endorses the check in Timkin’s name and deposits the check in an account that he opened in Sunny Bank in the name “Timkin Bearing Co. Sunny Bank accepts the check and collects payment from the drawee bank, First Bank. First Bank charges Porter Cable’s account $9,500. Smith transfers $9,500 out of the Timkin account and closes it. Porter Cable discovers the fraud and demands that their account be re-credited. Evaluate the arguments for Porter Cable and the banks. Determine which party should win and support your answer. Provide arguments for each party. Determine which party will win. Provide support for the arguments and the final answer with cases or scholarly articles from the South University Online Library. Scenario 2 – Negotiable Instruments Ginny DeWitt borrowed $30,000 from SunTrust Bank to pay for her first year of college and signed a promissory note that required payments to start six months after graduation or the student fails to enroll in at least one-half of the full time load. Ginny dropped out of college to pursue her passion of opening a gift shop. When Ginny failed to pay the debt, SunTrust transferred the note to First Bank in New York. New York Bank obtained a court order allowing it to garnish Ginny’s wages and her federal income tax refund. Ginny filed a lawsuit seeing to avoid the payment, claiming the debt was not valid because she did not sign any documentation promising to pay First Bank. She also argued that the note lacked consideration. Explain the holder or holder in due course status of SunTrust when the bank took the note from Ginny and then First Bank when it took the note from SunTrust. Address GInny’s arguments concerning the validity of the debt. Determine the outcome of the case and provide support for your answer. Scenario 3 – Holder in Due Course John Haley hired Mary Black as a bookkeeper at Florida Dental Center, Inc. Haley fired Black when he learned that she embezzled more than $200,000 and did not pay over $150,000 in state and federal taxes owed by the business. Haley said that if Black did not repay the embezzled funds, he would notify law enforcement. Black started working as a bookkeeper for Senior Daycare, a business owned by her father. Without proper authorization, Black wrote a check to Florida Dental for $175,000 out of Senior Daycare’s account and deposited the check directly into Florida Dental’s checking account. Black told Haley that the funds were a loan from her family so she could repay Florida Dental. Haley used the funds to pay the back taxes owed. Two years later, Black’s father discovered her theft and sued both Haley and Florida Dental for conversion because Black did not have authority to take the funds. Evaluate Florida Dental’s status as a holder in due course (HDC) of the funds Mary repaid. Since Haley knew that Black previously embezzled funds from Florida Dental when she was an employee, should Haley have been suspicious about the source of the funds that Black used to repay the debt? Could this knowledge impact the court’s decision? Provide support for your answers. Discussion Question Part II Using the business you created in Week 1, select three topics from the list below and explain how your business will handle issues related to the topics.Justify your answers with relevant laws, cases, or examples. Acceptance of checks Prevention of forgery (internal employees) Dishonored (returned checks) Acceptance of payment by electronic means, such as PayPal Alternative payments such as Bitcoin, BPAY Gift cards Issuing credit to customers

1. Choose two firms that compete within the same industry (e.g., J.C. Penney and Sears, Johnson & Johnson and Merck, Ford and GM). 2. Go to each firm’s website, and then access and download their annual reports (financial statements). 3. Using the accounting data from the firms’ financial statements and the ratios studied in Chapter 9 of the textbook, calculate all ratios for each firm (liquidity ratios, activity ratios, profitability ratios, leverage ratios, and coverage ratios). 4. Analyze and compare your calculations for the two firms. 5. In Discussion Forum 1, report to the class on your figures and analysis by the date indicated in the Course Calendar. Please title your thread “Ratio Analysis/[Your Name].” Be sure to include the web addresses (URLs) of the firms whose websites you visited.

Purpose This assignment is intended to help you learn how to apply statistical methods when analyzing operational data, evaluating the performance of current marketing strategies, and recommending actionable business decisions. This is an opportunity to build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills within the context of data analysis and interpretation. You’ll gain a first-hand understanding of how data analytics supports decision-making and adds value to an organization. Scenario: Pastas R Us, Inc. is a fast-casual restaurant chain specializing in noodle-based dishes,  soups, and salads. Since its inception, the business development team has favored opening new restaurants in areas (within a 3-mile radius) that satisfy the following demographic conditions·  Median age between 25 – 45 years old·  Household median income above national average·  At least 15% college-educated adult population Last year, the marketing department rolled out a Loyalty Card strategy to increase sales. Under this program, customers present their Loyalty Card when paying for their orders and receive some free food after making 10 purchases. The company has collected data from its 74 restaurants to track important variables such as average sales per customer, year-on-year sales growth, sales per sq. ft., Loyalty Card usage as a percentage of sales, and others. A key metric of financial performance in the restaurant industry is annual sales per sq. ft. For example, if a 1200 sq. ft. restaurant recorded $2 million in sales last year, then it sold $1,667 per sq. ft. Executive management wants to know whether the current expansion criteria can be improved. They want to evaluate the effectiveness of the Loyalty Card marketing strategy and identify feasible, actionable opportunities for improvement. As a member of the analytics department, you’ve been assigned the responsibility of conducting a thorough statistical analysis of the company’s available database to answer executive management’s questions. Report: Write a 750-word statistical report that includes the following sections:·  Section 1: Scope and descriptive statistics·  Section 2: Analysis·  Section 3: Recommendations and Implementation Section 1 – Scope and descriptive statistics·  State the report’s objective·  Discuss the nature of the current database. What variables were analyzed?·  Summarize your descriptive statistics findings from Excel. Use a table and insert appropriate graphs. Section 2 – Analysis ·  Using Excel, create scatter plots and display the regression equations for the following pairs of variables:·  “BachDeg%” versus “Sales/SqFt”·  “MedIncome” versus “Sales/SqFt”·  “MedAge” versus “Sales/SqFt”·  “LoyaltyCard(%)” versus “sales growth(%)”·  In your report, include the scatter plots. For each scatter plot, designate the type of relationship observed (increasing/positive, decreasing/negative, or no relationship) and determine what you can conclude from these relationships. Section 3: Recommendations and implementation·  Based on your findings above, assess which expansion criteria seem to be more effective. Could any expansion criterion be changed or eliminated? If so, which ones and why?·  Based on your findings above, does it appear as if the Loyalty Card is positively correlated with sales growth? Would you recommend changing this marketing strategy?·  Based on your previous findings, recommend marketing positioning that targets a specific demographic. (Hint: Are younger people patronizing the restaurants more than older people?)·  Indicate what information should be collected to track and evaluate the effectiveness of your recommendations. How can this data be collected? (Hint: Would you use survey/samples or census?)Cite references to support your assignment.

You work for a company that makes vehicle safety systems, such as radar, on-board cameras, and the ever-present back-up beeper. To reduce costs on your most mature product, the back-up beeper, you are considering moving production out of the United States. You are considering Mexico, the Philippines, and Singapore. You are interested in road infrastructure, port infrastructure, technological readiness, and wages. 1. Compare the four countries on these dimensions. Include the United States in your analysis as well as a baseline. For wages, use the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Foreign Labor Statistics website bls.gov/fls. In particular, use the Index of Hourly Compensation Costs for Production Workers https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ichcc.t01.htm (Links to an external site.). For the other data, use the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report      http://gcr.weforum.org/gcr/ (Links to an external site.) The bar chart comparison feature is an efficient way to get the information you need.2. You are also interested in the overall business climate, which you consider consisting of factors like corruption, accounting standards, and a solid legal system. Use the Opacity Index Operations and Supply Chain Management for the 21st Century 121to compare the overall level of opacity of each of the four countries: http://www.kurtzmangroup.com/reports/opacity_index_2.pdf  (Links to an external site.)3. What other factors should be considered? 4. What is your recommendation? (You also can locate the reports by doing a web search on “opacity index” or/and on “BLS FLS Production Workers: Indexes of hourly compensation costs”)

What are the two examples go quantitative data? and explain.

ExxonMobil ( XOM) is one of the half- dozen major oil companies in the world. The firm has four primary operating divisions ( upstream, downstream, chemical, and global services) as well as a number of operating companies that it has acquired over the years. A recent major acquisition was XTO Energy, which was acquired in 2009 for $ 41 billion. The XTO acquisition gave ExxonMobil a significant presence in the development of domestic unconventional natural gas resources, including the development of shale gas formations, which was booming at the time. Assume that you have just been hired to be an analyst working for ExxonMobil’s chief financial officer. Your first assignment was to look into the proper cost of capital for use in making corporate investments across the company’s many business units. a. Would you recommend that ExxonMobil use a single company-wide cost of capital for analyzing capital expenditures in all its business units? Why or why not? b. If you were to evaluate divisional costs of capital, how would you go about estimating these costs of capital for ExxonMobil? Discuss how you would approach the problem in terms of how you would evaluate the weights to use for various sources of capital as well as how you would estimate the costs of individual sources of capital for each division. Instructions:  In 600-750 words in length (not including title page and reference page), respond to the case below. Your paper must include at least two scholarly journal references (in addition to your book). Refer to the Writing Assignment Grading Criteria below for requirements in content, organization, writing style, grammar, and APA 7th edition format. Your paper should have, at the very least, a title page, introduction and conclusion paragraphs, level headings, references, and citations.

 Financial Research Report Introduction Imagine that you are a financial manager researching investments for your client. Think of a friend or a family member as a client. Define their characteristics and goals such as an employee or employer, relatively young (less than 40 years) or close to retirement, having some savings/property, a risk taker or risk averter, etc. Next, use Nexis Uni at the Strayer University library, located at Nexis Uni, click on “Company Dossier” to research the stock of any U.S. publicly traded company that you may consider as an investment opportunity for your client. Your investment should align with your client’s investment goals. (Note: Please ensure that you are able to find enough information about this company in order to complete this assignment. You will create an appendix, in which you will insert related information.) Instructions Your final financial research report will be 6–8 pages long and be completed in two parts. This assignment only covers the first part. This assignment requires you to use at least five quality academic resources and cover the following topics: Rationale for choosing the company in which to invest. Ratio analysis. Stock price analysis. Recommendations. Refer to the following resources to assist with completing your assignment: Stock Selection Forbes: Six Rules to Follow When Picking Stocks. CNN Money: Stocks: Investing in Stocks. The Motley Fool: 13 Steps to Investing Foolishly. Seeking Alpha: The Graham And Dodd Method For Valuing Stocks. Investopedia: Guide to Stock-Picking Strategies. Seeking Alpha: Get Your Smart Beta Here! Dividend Growth Stocks As ‘Strategic Beta’ Investments. Market and Company Information U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: Market Structure. Yahoo! Finance. Seeking Alpha (Note: This is also available through the Android or iTunes App store.) Morningstar (Note: You can create a no-cost Basic Access account.) Research Hub, located in the left menu of your course in Blackboard. Part 1 (1–2 pages) Provide a rationale for the stock that you selected, indicating the significant economic, financial, and other factors that led you to consider this stock. Suggest the primary reasons why the selected stock is a suitable investment for your client? Include a description of your client’s profile. List five resources you’ll use to complete this assignment and begin to build your reference list. Remember you must use at least five quality academic resources for the final assignment. This course requires the use of Strayer Writing Standards. For assistance and information, please refer to the Strayer Writing Standards link in the left-hand menu of your course. Check with your professor for any additional instructions. The specific course learning outcome associated with this assignment is as follows: Determine the suitability of an investment strategy that considers external risk factors and a literature review.

Using the Personal Monthly Budget template found in Microsoft Excel, create a personal record of your money coming in and money going out by completing entries under the Projected column of the spreadsheet.  You will NOT be submitting this spreadsheet as this is your personal information.  For this assignment, write a summary of what you learn from this exercise. Does your income exceed your expenses? If so, how much are you saving each month, and is it enough? How do you know it is enough? If not, what are your goals for addressing the deficit (i.e. job change, cut back on expenses, etc) How is your short-term savings—if you had an emergency, would you have enough in savings to handle the situation? Why is a savings account important? How much do you need to have in savings? What are some tips to accumulating savings? What else did you learn from this budgeting exercise that could help you and/or your family finances going forward Write a 1-2 page paper that addresses these questions after completing your budget worksheet? Use the template provided. Follow APA format, including a title page, introduction, conclusion, citations, and a minimum of one scholarly reference (not Wikipedia or Investopedia). See the attached PPT file. Turnitin report of no more than 20% similarity index is required. Submit all answers as one file by midnight ET, Day 7 (Sunday). Use the naming convention JSmith_Week 2 Assignment Supporting Material

Read the case: Nest Wealth Asset Management, Inc Submit in 2 to 5-pages of analyses and answer the question: How is Nest Wealth positioned against these market forces? What are its strengths? What are its vulnerabilities? https://www.wealthmanagement.com/estate-planning/more-taxes-rich https://www.wealthmanagement.com/news/advisors-prep-clients-potential-tax-increases https://www.wealthmanagement.com/news/advisors-prep-clients-potential-tax-increases