Table of Contents Corporate Overview 3 Industry Analysis 3 Business Strategy 4 Corporate Governance 5 Social Responsibility & Ethics 8 Quantitative Analysis 9 Executive Summary 9 Income Statement Analysis 10 Balance Sheet Analysis 11 Raito Analysis 13 Financial Health 15 Earnings Quality 15 Appendix A 18 Appendix B 19 Appendix C 20 Appendix D 22 Appendix E 23 Appendix F 24 Appendix G 26 Works Cited 18 Corporate Overview Industry Analysis Home improvement industry is highly fragmented; there is very little direct competition between companies in this industry. The only companies that exert direct competition against each other are Home Depot, Inc. and Lowe’s Company, Inc. These two companies dominate the industry by controlling more than 30% of the home improvement market each. Being the second largest retailer in the United States, Home Depot, Inc. is still considered to be the leader of the home improvement industry. By focusing on sales, service and execution, which helped the company, achieve considerable sales growth in the past few years.
The company receives tremendous attention due to its Blue-light Specials arrangements , where they provide incidental discounts in specific departments of the store The image grew through the 70 's and 80 's (`Corporate History , 2006 When the company enters the 90 's , its course of luck began to change The company no longer experience considerable growth in image and profits , but instead , experienced a chain of problems that finally lead to its bankruptcy in 2002 (Evans , 2002 . In 2003 however, the company rise again under the name Kmart Holdings Corporation and began trading on NASDAQ. Shortly after introducing a new logo, the company joined with Sears , Roebuck and Company in 2004 and changed its name again to Sears holding Corporation . Today , the company operates stores under the store brand Kmart and Sears. Sears began with humble beginning, the retail giant started out as a watch company under the name of R. W. Sears Watch Company.
Case Study Analysis: Prince Sports, Inc. Kimberly Amodio Introduction Prince Sports is a racquet sports company whose portfolio of brands includes Prince (tennis, squash, and badminton), Ektelon (racquetball) and Viking (platform/paddle tennis). The company was founded in Princeton NJ in 1970, while Bob McClure was reversing a vacuum cleaner motor, and engineers the worlds first ball machine, known as the "Little Prince". It's complete line of tennis product is astounding: they carry more than 160 racquet models; more than 50 tennis strings; over 50 footwear models and countless apparel, bags and accessories. Prince prides itself on its history of innovation in tennis, including inventing the first “oversize” and “long body“ racquets, the first “synthetic gut” tennis string, and the first “Natural Foot Shape” tennis shoe. Work cited:(Kerin, R, Hartley & Rudelius, W -- Marketing 11th ed.
From Vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood musical movies, to ragtime, jazz, swing, and rock and roll, all the way to television variety shows after the depression; the pianos of Tin Pan Alley are credited for laying the foundation for the many entertainments that have endured for over two hundred years. Before radio, people had pianos for entertainment purposes. This made Tin Pan Alley’s technique of having musicians pump out songs to then sell sheet music to consumers profitable since more often than not Tin Pan Alley’s publishers only paid a modest flat rate per song. The publishers had “pluggers” that they would pay to incorporate songs into acts in front of consumers. In doing this they created a synergy with the live entertainment industry that got consumers to buy sheet music as well as tickets to live entertainment acts.
This legislation was created as a result of numerous fraudulent corporate instances prior to 2002 which resulted in weakened US markets and little to no trust from investors. The general purpose of this legislation was to implement new rules in the accounting industry that hold higher level accounting personnel accountable in accounting schemes and regain the confidence of investors as it pertains to the US market in hopes that the market will strengthen as a result of the new rules (Bing, 2007). The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which I may refer to as SOX moving forward, is made up of eleven titles and various sections within these titles (United States Code, Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, 2002). Some of the titles and sections that are of importance to the fraud of Phar-Mar Inc., Waste
S. Truett Cathy has built his private company around his family. As seen above in the company’s breakdown of senior leaders. Chick-fil-A’s success and failures are a family matter. The company is now being passed to the 3rd generation of Cathy’s family. Chick-fil-A has increased their market sales for 45 consecutive years cumulating in a 14% increase in 2012 with a 4.6 billion USD annual sales year-end total.
Albert speer essay Albert Speer was born on the 19th of March 1905, In Mannheim, a German Industrial city near the French border. Albert was born into an upper class family, better known as haute bourgeoisie, whereby his family was amongst the wealthiest in the city. In 1923, Albert passed his arbiter examinations and received the top grade in mathematics which essentially gave him strong reason to consider a career as a mathematician but alternatively, he was persuaded by his father to study architecture, being the third generation in his family to do so. Due to the hyperinflation crisis of 1923, Speer was forced to attend the less elite institute of technology in nearby Karlsruhe, rather than one in Munich or Berlin. Despite this, by the following spring, the hyperinflation crisis had eased and Speer was able to transfer to the institute of technology in Munich and then again on to one in Berlin.
Had Speer not been forced into the architect profession, then his position and role in the Nazi party would have been completely different, with WWII potentially ending a whole 6 months earlier. The Nazi Party’s rise in popularity following the 1929 Depression meant that Speer was exposed to their ideas and philosophies. This was because of the position that Speer held at this time. As a teacher at Berlin’s Institute of Technology, many of Speer’s students were National Socialists, and although he was teaching Architecture, politics tended to dominate his seminars. Although for quite a time Speer resisted the
Sorenson was focused on specialized and high technology niche products. The company was a major manufacturer for catheter and catheter device and the demand price for their products were not price sensitive but competed on market price against its competitors. Since the company did not sell the standard commodity products, sales efforts bypassed the traditional hospital purchasing channels but focused on selling directly to the medical professionals. Generally, the cost of these products were charged to the individual patient account. To stay competitive with rival companies, Sorenson promoted a comprehensive service program that assured prompt deliveries within 24 hours to major hospitals.
Assignment: Give a brief evaluation of the key differences in the competencies between Philips and Matsushita INNOVATION SKILLS: PHILIPS always kept a big focus on R&D and on technical innovation. They created new products but barely managed to find efficient solutions to commercialize the products and to benefit from their innovations. (example of the microwave, a technology "stolen" by Matsushita). MATSUSHITA was always considered as a "copycat": they would learn from their competitors, copy products and make them available on the market very quickly. For example, they copied the Videocassette recorder technology and used mass merchandisers to make this product a great success in the 80's.