FIN 301 Annual Financial Statements – Assignment Solution
Instruction: I have prepared the required data in excel and highlighted the two significant changes that I found in the annual financial statements. The assignment requires me to give meaningful reasoning for these significant changes I spotted in the data. I have already prepared reasoning for the Balance Sheet. I want you to complete the reasoning for the Cash Flow and Income Statement. Also check for any errors in data calculation. Class Assignment 1) Pick one of the following companies: Disney, Bio Rad Laboratories, Albertsons, Williams-Sonoma, Invitae, Seer, Air B&B 2) Using GGU’s Mergent access, read through the Company Details tab and the News tab, as well as any other research that interests you on Mergent or the company webpage.  3) Download an excel friendly version of all sections of the most recent annual financial statements from the Company Financials tab for the past 3 years. Open the excel and analyze what has changed most dramatically in the past 3 years on each of the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow Statement.  To do this, check and clean the data, then set up basic analytic formulas in excel to autocalculate for you as per the example in class (calculate the differences, set a threshold, and search for largest fluctuation or use conditional formatting to easily identify). NOTE: An explanation cannot simply be “due to COVID.” As that has a broad impact economically in the last 3 years, if the reasons are in fact related in someway to COVID versus other business reasons, specifics must be given (sales, government grants, closed stores, rising inventory, etc relevant only to the company) 4) Select TWO of the most dramatic changes with the most recent annual financial statements being the comparison point. Write about both of the most dramatic changes and extrapolate why you believe that happened. Write the explanation of the change with 3 Sentences MAX and you can use graphic and figures to show what has changed and explain your analysis. Submit directly to e-learning, a separate file upload is not necessary. NOTE- As indicated in the recording during the section on this assignment, an example of how you can set up your analysis for your own use is attached. Just a quick snip as this is very easy and since you are only submitting your write up, it is up to you how you identify the largest fluctuations. As shown in the snip have the annual financial statements line items by year, and then create two columns. (1) A difference by % and (2) a difference by a dollar amount ($). You can use conditional formatting if colors help you quickly see the largest flux by line item (not totals).