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1. How can financial ratios extend your understanding of financial statements? What questions do the time series of ratios in case Exhibit 7 raise? What questions do the ratios on peer firms in case Exhibits 8 and 9 raise? Financial ratios give you a method of putting numbers into comparable values. How could Krispy Kreme have higher profit margin than Starbucks? Their operating profit is much higher than the average limited-service restaurants, but their operating expenses are also much higher than the other comparable companies. Compared to the other quick-service restaurants, Krispy Kreme is much more liquid, but also has a lower inventory turnover. Financial ratios, especially when listed for multiple years in a row, can really expand what you are seeing on the financial statements with just a glance. The asset turnover ratio was decreasing towards 1 from 2000-04. As Krispy Kreme expanded assets were likely increasing. The fact that the ratio pushed from 2.1 to 1.01 in just four years shows those sales were not increasing proportionately with all the growth the company was experiencing. Exhibit 7: By a raising current ratio, we can see that Krispy Kreme is much more able to pay debt within the next year. This is good because even though there are a lot of equity issues going on in the business, they are not going to go bankrupt. Exhibit 9: One thing that really stands out in this exhibit is the miniscule amount of debt Krispy Kreme uses. I think they should leverage themselves to somewhat close to the industry average (around 35% current debt, and 42% long-term debt) to build some organic growth and get away from the business model that is bound to slow down. Financial ratios are a good indicator of a company’s health because they compare certain numbers to other related numbers. For example the Current ratio (Current Assets/Current Liabilities) is a good
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