Margin Course Works Samples For Students

Introduction

Costco, the third largest retailer chain in the U.S. and the seventh largest retailer in the world, has significantly grown in the last ten years, a critical period disrupted by the great recession, e-commerce revolution, and global competition. Although a big number of retailing enterprises failed to survive the difficult challenges of the decade, Costco demonstrated an outstanding revenue growth performance over its key competitors – Wal-mart (includes Sam’s Club), BJ’s, Target, Sears, and JC Penney. However, based on an analysis of the 10-year financials of Costco and its key competitors, the profit performance of Costco has not ...

Barbie Dolls and Accessories

Why might Mattel set a much lower contribution margin on its Barbie dolls than on the accessories for the dolls?
Contribution margin is the profit per unit of output; it is acquired by subtracting the unit variable cost from the unit cost of the product. Low contribution margin is experienced in products that are labour intensive while high contribution margin is for capital intensive products). In the above case, Barbie dolls have a lower profit as compared to the accessories of the dolls.

There are two ways of increasing a contribution margin: increasing the price or decreasing the variable cost. However ...

Introduction

Every business tries to enhance its productivity from different standpoints and angle and every standpoint deems extremely important from the viewpoint of an organization in total. Analysts analyze an organization from different angles and with the help of different methods and tools. All of these tools are essential to analyze and assess the level of financial based initiation from different angles in total.

Among number of methods and tools to analyze the financial based competitiveness of an organization, the name of different amount of ratios is one of them. Different sorts of ratios are profitability ratios, liquidity ratio, efficiency ...

Task 1

Explain the nature and role of accounts. You need to also explain why James and Rebecca need to produce accounting information in order to make financial decisions.

Answer

Accounting is the process of identifying, measuring and reporting economic information to the owners of business and all interested parties (Joel, 2008). Business transactions have financial implication on a business in both short term and long term (Frank & Allan, 2005). Some of the transactions are sale or purchases of fixed assets or current assets, paying of business expenses, and settling current liabilities among other business transactions. Accounting involves identifying, measuring and reporting ...

(a) How much did your company’s gross margin and gross margin as a percentage of revenue increase (decrease) over the past five fiscal years?

As per the report of Stock Analysis on Net on Starbucks’ profitability analysis, Starbucks’ gross profit margin was 55.75% in 2009, and it notably increased to 58.36% in the following year. However, the firm’s gross profit margin was decreased by 0.66% in 2011 reaching 57.70%. It was again dropped to 56.29% in 2012. According to the same report, in the last fiscal year, Starbucks achieved an improved gross profit margin of 57.14%. The recent increase in the company’s gross profit margin indicates that Starbucks is recovering from the shocks of the recent global recession. Similarly, the organization’ ...

- Introduction

This paper is a financial analysis of General Electric (GE) Company. GE is a multinational conglomerate company incorporated in the New York, United States. The four main segments of the company include; capital finance, technology, consumer & industrial, and energy. There are many products and services the company offers but within the named categories. GE is ranked among the top ten largest firms in the US in terms of gross revenue. The 2011 annual reports of GE reported a total asset base of $ 717,242 million and $ 66,875 million in revenue.

GE has been selected as a point because of the diversity ...

Executive summary

Royal Dutch Shell PLC commonly known as the shell is second largest energy company in the world whose registered office is in London. It is oil and Gas Company operating in various parts of the world; to stay relevant to climatic and environmental changes it engages in both renewable and non renewable energy. In addition, it is a vertically integrated oil company which engages in all oil activities from exploration to refining and marketing. Apart from its core activities, it has entered into partnership with various international organizations to preserve the environment. The company shares are listed in London stock ...

(a) The price in the market for this perfectly competitive from when p1, the firm would desire to sell over a hundred units. This is because the prices of single units would have gone down. The firm would sell more units with a tiny profit margin on each unit to make profits. The firm will then sell more units so that it can accumulate more profits and be able to stay in the business. Economically, the firm would not be making tangible profits because the margin on each unit is very small. If the firm does not have other products it is ...

The Horizontal Analysis

In the horizontal analysis of the company, one considers the various line items in the income statements and the balance sheet with similar items in the previous years. Looking at the year 2008, the company did not perform well. In terms of sales, there was a decrease in the sales compared to the year 2007. There was a decrease of $ 897,000 which is 15% of the sales revenue.
As a result of the low sales, the company suffered a loss in the gross profit. The profit reduced from $1.6M to $1.4M. When analysing the expenses, the website creation and maintenance is a ...

Transfer pricing is a process where prices or rates used when selling products or services between parent companies, divisions, departments, or subsidiary (SMULLEN, 2001). It exists when two related companies (the parent company and a subsidiary) trade amongst each other. For example, a US based subsidiary of Coca-cola trading with an African subsidiary of Coca-cola. When such subsidiaries engage in price establishments for a transaction the results are transfer pricing.

WITTENDORFF (2010) provides that in transfer pricing the prices set for the exchange may be the original prices set for the products or the original purchase price or a rate reduced to cater ...

Question 1

Ratios calculations for Walgreens and Rite Aid Corporation of fiscal year 2001 and 2000
LIQUIDITY RATIOS
Current ratio = Current assets ÷ Current liabilities
Quick ratio = (current Assets-Inventory) / current liabilities

ACTIVITY RATIOS

Inventory Turnover = sales/inventory
Accounts receivables Turnover = sales/ accounts receivables
Asset Turnover = Total sales/ Total Assets

LEVERAGE RATIOS

Debt to Equity Ratio = Total Debt/ Total Equity
Long-term Debt to Equity Ratio = Long-term debt/equity
Debt Ratio =Total Debt/ Total Assets

PROFITABILITY RATIOS

Gross profit margin = {sales –COGS} / sales
Operating profit margin = EBIT/ sales
Net profit margin = Net Profit After Taxes/ sales
Return on ...

The two concepts of accounting are very vital when it comes to the realization of the ones profit in a given business premise. They enable the manager to come up with the best policy in realizing the best profit for a given sale. They depend on the ability of the sales being on a fixed cost or at some points it can rely on some factors like the case of the absorption costing which is believed to be an absorption that is based on all issues dealing with the manufacturing costs into the issue of the inventory rating.

The various costs that ...

Pepsi versus Coca Cola

Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a US multinational beverage company, manufacturer, marketer and retailer of alcoholic-free drinks. The company has it’s headquarter in Atlanta. A pharmacist known as John Stith Pemberton in 1886 invented the Coca-Cola drink. In 1889, Coca-Cola formula was bought by Asa Griggs Candler, who used it to found the Coca-Cola Company in 1892 (Bodden, 2009). Under Cander’s leadership, the company grew and increased its distribution beyond Atlanta. In 1894, due to high demand for the drink, the company, through Joseph Biedenharn, installed bottling machinery that enabled the bottling of the drink.

Large scale bottling of ...

The main commodity that is exported through Hong Kong airport is electrical equipment. Electrical wire making equipment tops the list among all the electrical equipment exported from Hong Kong International Airport . This is the equipment that is used in the manufacturing of electrical wires.

Price per piece

This equipment is exported in sets. The price of each set is 50,000 Chinese Yuan. The conversion rate is 0.17 Canadian Dollar is equivalent to 1 Chinese Yuan as of November 2013. This amount will be Canadian $8500. Each set has 5 pieces of equipment. This implies that the price of each piece of ...

The cost which the organization incurs the production and acquisition of products and services which it intends to sell is very important. The pricing strategy of the organization is significantly affected by costs. Therefore, costs designed to tackle the challenges of the economic and the noneconomic factors very efficiently. The objective of the costing models is to categorize the factors of the marketing objectives of the company and the mission of the company (Gitman, 2003).

Accurately determination of cost is important in organization to remain profitable. Costing does not only require including direct and indirect cost associated with business ...

Company Description

Tottenham Hotspur Plc is engaged in the operation of a professional football club in England together with related commercial activities. The Company has two segments: football and property. In addition, the Company continues to acquire numerous properties with a view to a new stadium development.

The sponsors of the club include Autonomy, Investec, Puma, Thomas Cook Sport, Sporting bet, Carlsberg, TNT, EA Sports and Glyn Hopkin. The Company's Tottenham Tribute Trust is an organisation that reaches out to members of the Spurs family who are fighting hard times either financially, medically or both. The clubs patron includes Chigwell Construction (London) Ltd is a ...

Background:

With a rich history of success, Pepsi was an establishment of the 1898, in Carolinas. The drink was an original invention of Caleb Bradham. Based in New Bern, North Carolina, he was a pharmacist and drugstore owner ("Pepsi History," n.d.).

It was five years after the introduction of Coke that Pepsi came into existence, in the year 1893. This was the time when the inventor Caleb Bradham decided serving customers his soda machine produced ‘Brad’s Drink’. In response to the positive feedback that he received from the drinkers, he began advertising his samples in 1898, after naming ...

Question 1: What is (are) the principal activity(ies) of this business?

Serving both the United States and United kingdom, Established in Ireland, the Green core group is one of the leading convenience food business’s in the world . The convenience food divisions provides a wide range of chilled, frozen and ambient foods to major retail, manufacturing and food service companies. Specifically in the UK, Greencore provides sandwiches, Italian chilled meals, branded chilled meals, chilled non-dairy desserts, chilled sauces, cooking sauces and pickles and Christmas cakes.( See Greencore Food to go UK) In the US Greencore is best known for providing “grab and go” packaged food options (sandwiches, salads, sushi, entrees ...

The product that I have chosen is Oil. Oil is a natural product that is found in oil wells in large quantities. The nature of oil found in these wells is crude and it has to pass through several refining processes, before the final product is obtained. Crude oil is used to create Jet Fuels, Motor Lubes, Petrol, Diesel, and other important products that are used by both the household consumers, as well as the industrial consumers. According to Economicsonline (2014), the use of Oil by the industrial organizations dates back to 18th century.

Source: Infomine, 2014

The graph above shows the trend ...

Introduction

There are numerous multinational enterprises (MNEs), which dominate the global market and operate in different regions, but proliferation of MNEs has existed for more than 200 years now. Initially, multinational enterprises represented a segment of direct foreign investments in various states as they did not form joint investments with local firms. However, with the introduction of globalization coupled market liberalization, MNEs have had an opportunity to expand their market niche and enhance efficiency and productivity; a move that has propelled them to become key players in the business arena. Although MNEs dominant global markets, they have experienced several global financial crisis ...

Question One

Financial statements can be viewed from three perspectives; shareholders, creditors and managers. To begin with, a company’s management is the largest users of its financial statements. It primarily relies on financial statements such as the statement of financial position, statement of income and cash flow statements to determine the effectiveness of all decisions it makes in the course of running the company. The owners of any company elect managers and directors to manage all the funds they invest into the company. As a result, the management is fully answerable to the shareholders and must deliver periodic reports detailing the effectiveness ...

- Use of ratios in performance evaluation

Ratios provide an evaluation platform for companies. Through calculation of ratios, firms have two to three options for evaluation. The options involve a set of conditions that make the use of ratios possible. This is because ratios only play a comparison role and cannot be used in isolation. They have to be applied together with a set of other ratios to make comparison hence deduce information that enables performance evaluation.

The first option in using ratios involves the application of ratios together with industrial ratios of the firm’s industry. Often, the industry in which the firm operates in have industrial ratios. ...

According to Gygi and Williams (2012), Lean refers to creating value to customers using fewer resources. The main idea behind the concept of lean is maximising customer’s value and minimise wastes. Manufacturing refers to the process of production of goods. Therefore, lean manufacturing refers to the production of superior quality goods for the customers at significantly affordable prices. Some of the importance of the lean manufacturing to the business organization includes:

- Building quality in the production process
- Elimination of waste in the production process
- Developing a unique approach towards corporate management.
- Developing ...

Arguably, business organization undergoes tremendous stages before achieving its main goals. As a matter of fact, every business has its unique set of processes and guidelines designed for its proper functioning and operations. But, despite the variations all business organizations must undergo the four stages of growth. Each of these stages has its unique characteristics and its influenced by demand, availability of capital, supply, as well as consumer confidence. These four stages of growth a business organization might experience include start-up, growth stage, mature stage, as well as decline.

Start-up stage is very crucial to every business that has come into ...

In determining the price of a commodity, a cost/management accountant must rely on valid cost information so as to arrive at a price that will incorporate all the relevant costs. Not all costs that are involved in the production of a commodity will have a direct impact on the price of such commodity, it’s with this understanding that management rely on cost information in making pricing decisions.

Organizations need to decide the prices that are acceptable for their goods and services. However, sometimes the prices are determined by the market forces of demand and supply and thus a firm will have little or no ...

Executive Summary

This paper tries to conduct a comparative portfolio analysis for Microsoft Corporation, based on the most recent Annual 10-K Filings made by the company to the Securities & Exchange Commission for FY2011. The base year chosen is FY2010, so as to allow for a clear comparative depiction of both current & historical performance. The analysis, based on the study of the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Statement of Cash Flows, & Statement of Changes in Stockholders’ Equity, quantifies the annual performance using the most important accounting ratios that provide a summarized diagnosis of the overall current financial health of the software giant, and a ...

1. Contribution margin per hair cut performed
2. Number of haircuts for annual breakeven point
Breakeven point is the point where the total income from the performed activity equals the total sum of the fixed expenditure per year. In this case, it is the point where the total income from the haircuts equals the total fixed expenditure per year.
We must therefore calculate the total expenses per year, which is given as the sum of Barbers expenses per year and other expenses.

Barbers expenses

Total expenses from workers per hour = 5 X 9.9 = $ 49.5

Workers expense per week = ...

Abstract

As a senior manager of a computer company that competes with Apple, Inc., this paper will conduct a SWOT analysis of Apple Inc. that could help me with my own strategies. The Analysis will identify roughly five factors of Apple’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, and will explain why each factor is relevant. It will go into explaining why each example its strength, weakness, opportunity, or a threat. After the analysis, a strategy there will be proposal as well as a product introduced to take advantage of Apple’s vulnerabilities that will help increase my firm’s market share (AIU, 2014).

Introduction

According ...

Accounting Standard followed by the company:

i) General Mills Inc:

General Mills Inc, for the purpose of its financial reporting, follows Generally Accepted Accounting Principle(GAAP).

ii) Meiji Holdings:
The company, for the purpose of the financial reporting and also for its subsidiaries, follows Generally Accepted Accounting Principle(GAAP). The company declares that the accounting standards are different from International Financial Reporting Standard(IFRS).

Accounting Standard followed by the auditors:

i)General Mills Inc:
The financial statements of the company are audited by KPMG LLP, which are the external auditors of the company. The external auditors have used standards of Public Company Accounting Oversight Board(United States). The standards obligates the auditors to ensure that all the financial statements of the company are free from any material ...

Management: Course Final Paper

Introduction
In earlier studies, organization change has been defined as the breaking down of existing structures and the creation of new ones. In other words, it is a transformation of an organization between two points in time. Such a scenario can develop anxiety, uncertainty, and ambiguity in the minds of employees due to differences in experienced, socio-demographic characteristics, attitude, knowledge and behavioural patterns. For overcoming the employees’ nervousness management, organizational change agents put stress extensively on employee readiness predictor variables. As clearly stated in the literature, employee attitude and employee readiness factors pose a significant affect in preparing employees physically and ...

Introduction

Home Health Plus is a new service based company. Till date the service offerings available in the retired and old age service market are limited. There are very few healthcare providers offering quality services, and there are very few products catering to the needs of the retired people. Home Health Plus plans to offer some unique products in this market. Currently, the services available for old age people are mainly provided if a person stays in an old age home or community.

Services like light housekeeping, laundry services, preparation of meals and snacks are offered at reasonable price only at old ...

Nestle Sdn.Bhd is the Malaysian district of the Nestle Corporation, originally set up in Switzerland, as a multinational nutrition and beverage company with its headquarters in Vevey. It truly possesses the leading points at the world food production and distribution market, as its market capitalization exceeds the number of 200 million USD. The 29 brands of the company gained their popularity through all over the world, varying from casual food and drink products, to even medical nutrition.

Nestle corporation represented its production on the Malaysian borders more than a hundred years ago, as the first company in Malaysia appeared in 1912 ...

EVALUATION OF WOOD GROUP EXISTING STRATEGIES - AN OIL AND GAS SUPPORT/SERVICES COMPANY BASED IN SCOTLAND THAT OPERATES IN SOME 50 COUNTRIES

Executive summary

Wood Group Engineering Wood group is an autonomous supplier of pivoting tool services and clients who are in demand of the energy of oil and gas markets. The services the GTS provides include industrial designing, architecture, obtainment and construction. They also provide office operations and support, updates, optimization and overhauls of gas and steam turbines, pumps, compressors and other many services. Their strategy and goals work on ensuring that they are a global leader in their callings, hence ...

What are the underlying problems facing Fiat’s car division?

Fiat is an Italian company with its business once solely concentrated in Italy. After the post war period, Fiat with the help from Italian government became the number one automobile manufacturer in Italy. Fiat enjoyed that position for almost 50 years without any threat from other European players. However, decades of doing business with ease and with the help of Italian government had created operational, strategic and managerial inefficiencies within the company. For almost 5 decades even with its huge success in the Western European market, Fiat never thought of expanding beyond the region. Finally, by the time it ...

Financial statements of an organization provide potential investors with a more detailed insight about the organization as opposed to the casual glimpses of the organization’s stock market prices. For an investor who is interested in investing in a particular organizations stock, and has the financial records of the organization in question at his disposal, then the first five areas to review before investing would be as follows:

- Liquidity Position: The balance sheet presents a broader overview of the organization’s financial position. From balance sheet data, it is possible to calculate the current ratio which reveals the general liquidity of ...

Business Management

Event 1: Rising fuel prices: The constant sorrow of the airline industry

The consistent volatility in oil prices has been a serious concern for airline companies now. Although the mid-east crisis seems to be solved now and oil prices have now returned to a more sustainable level with the current market prices hovering around $105-106/ barrel, however, the upside-downside trend in the oil prices has endowed an unwanted pressure on profitability of airline companies. The issue is not about higher or lower price, but relating to the rate at which they increase or decrease as the airline company has to set ...

Introduction

The current era of entrepreneurship is known as the era of technology and industrialization as both of these things are some of the essentials for the growth of an entity. Organization is a place in which number of departments work together for the achievement of a single and pre-specified goal in particular and among them, the name of Marketing department is one of them (Burrow, 2008, pp. 22-29).

Marketing department is the one which is used to present the products in front of the customers and it is one of the most effective departments from the viewpoint of an organization. There ...

Analysis

Financial competitiveness and financial belongings are some of the major things and aspects from the viewpoint of an organization in total. Organizations always try to enhance their productivity and only those projects would have been selected which are essential for a company as far as enhancing the productivity is concerned (Piper, p. 59). The main objective of this assignment is to analyze the effectiveness of two different projects in total. Income statement of each of the project has been allotted and given with this analysis and the analyses of both of the projects are mentioned below simultaneously.

Analysis for Project-1

Income statement is a ...

Regression is used to analyze the situation among variables; this is done by estimating a relationship. Regression can be simple with one independent variable (x), multiple which has more than one variable; in this model there are multiple regression model that are characterized with a k variable that is independent. Linear where the y variable are with parameters that are to be estimated and one value in an equation not an error item. For example the general use of indicators of economy, for instance the Dow Jones consumer price index and the industrial average that a producer or a suppler can use to ...

Yummy Cheese company feasibility study

In Egypt, cheese is a popular staple diet that is consumed across the social economic divide. The industry offers a variety of cheese products that are consumed by different income groups in the country with varying price ranges. Egypt is a vast nation with a human population of 75 million, most of whom are youth and younger adults who require large quantities of food and nutrition products as they grow.

Current Markets

High income consumers in this country constitute 9 % of the country’s total population. This class of people is popular with buying hard cheese which is the most expensive of all types of ...

Bombardier Inc. is a global manufacturer of transportation and communication equipments. The company is based in Canada and produces railcars, jet boats, and snowmobiles. In order to compete in a global market and achieve economies of scale, Bombardier has standardized its products and marketing strategies (Bombardier, 2013). Its customers demand for different kinds of products and this has motivated the company into producing products that are customized for the global market. Therefore, the company is pursuing a strategy of establishing top to bottom design and production facilities in various regions in order to better serve for global demands. However, the company is ...

INTRODUCTION

Small businesses face many issues in comparison to the well established organizations. However, among several issues one of the major issues that small businesses face is to raise capital. Many small businesses and entrepreneurs may have the ability to make their organization a big organization however because of lack of investment they are not able to do so. With the increased risk in the market, banks and venture capitals have also become very much risk averse instead of accepting the risk and growing their investment. This has also lead to such situation where small businesses face different issues in raising ...

Executive Summary

The strategic plan of Pepsi aims at establishing a clear vision and defined goals of how to maintain market leadership of Pepsi and how it has been able to be the best employer in the recent past. Pepsi Co majority of the times had a dominant position in the market, however, at the same time, it has also faced intense competition from its rival, Coca- Cola. The one type of change that it has experience in the last five years is its Diversity Inclusion Project which is now being led by CEO, Indra Nooyi, who has also been a major transformation in ...

Company Overview

Nas-T-Shirts will be the talk of the town! This new t-shirt line will allow people to wear their attitude, cause, idea or general informative messages on their shirt! Nas-T-Shirts will allow verbal artists to treat an ordinary shirt as his canvas, stating crafty messages that are brought to life using cutting edge shirt-print technology done with high quality ink, resulting in very professional looking and long-lasting works-of-art.. Nas-T Shirts will make your thoughts and musings an everyday, accessible fashion accessory!

Nas-T-Shirts Corporation is headed by founder (name of student) and its office is located at (address of student). Nas-T-Shirts ...

The law of comparative advantage has, for a long time, been used as the basis of international trade. The law is one of the main potential explanations for income growth rates and higher incomes of open economies. International trade currently accounts for about 25% of the worlds GDP, thanks to the liberalization of trade and the increase in foreign direct investment. Countries and companies trade with each other because of the gains or benefits that accrue from the exchange of goods and services to the trading countries. According to the law of comparative advantage, countries should produce the goods in ...

Market Planning

SWOT analysis is a process used in evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that occur in any business entity (Phla & Richter, 2009). It comprises of specific objectives of the business venture and identifies both the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieve the set targets and objectives of any given firm (Phla & Richter, 2009).

Factor

• strength
• weakness
• opportunity
• threats

Product

• Variety kind of Safe guard Soap. (bathing, Showering, washing etc soaps)
• Lack of means to access remote areas.
• New market place & identification of a market gap.
• High competition in the market I.e.
• Delta soap, Medisoft, ...
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The Marketing Mix is a business fundamental that most organizations follow in order to devise effective marketing strategies. Originally, the market mix consisted of 4 Ps: a) Product, b) Price, c) Place, and d) Promotion. However, as markets changed and consumer demands grew, three more Ps were added to the mix, namely a) Physical Layout, b) Provision for customer service, and c) Processes. However, marketing managers need to be alert to changing market situations in order to adapt their marketing mix effectively. When marketing their products firms need to create a successful mix of: a) the right product, b) sold at the right price, c) in the ...