Effective financial statement analysis requires an understanding of a firm’s economic characteristics.
The relations between various financial statement items provide evidence of many of these economic characteristics. The attached document presents balance sheets and income statements for twelve firms in different industries. These balance sheets and income statements express various items as a percentage of operating revenues (that is, the statement divides all amounts by operating revenues for the year). A dash for a particular financial statement item does not necessarily mean that the amount is zero. It merely indicates that the amount is not sufficiently large for the firm to disclose it. The twelve companies, the country of their headquarters, and a brief description of
their activities follow.
Accor (France): World’s largest hotel group, operating hotels under the names of Sofitel, Novotel, Motel 6, and others. Accor has grown in recent rears by acquiring established hotel chains.
Arbed-Acier (Luxembourg): Offers flat-rolled steel products, primarily to the European automobile industry.
Carrefour (France): Operates grocery supermarkets and hypermarkets in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
Deutsche Telekom (Germany): Europe’s largest provider of wired and wireless telecommunication services. The telecommunications industry has experienced increased deregulation in recent years.
Fortis (Netherlands): Offers both insurance and banking services. Operating revenues include insurance premiums received, investment income, and interest revenue on loans. Operating expenses include amounts actually paid or amounts it expects to pay in the future on insurance coverage outstanding during the year.
lnterpublic Group (U.S.): Creates advertising copy for clients. Interpublic purchases advertising time and space from various media and sells it to clients. Operating revenues represent the commission or fee earned by Interpublic for advertising copy created and media time and space sold. Operating expenses include compensation paid to employees. Interpublic acquired other marketing services firms in recent years.
Marks & Spencer (U.K.): Operates department stores in England and other retail stores in Europe and the United States. Offers its own credit card for customers’ purchases.
Nestle (Switzerland): World’s largest food processor, offering prepared foods, coffees, milk-based products, and mineral waters.
Roche Holding (Switzerland): Creates, manufactures, and distributes a wide variety of prescription drugs.
Sun Microsystems (U.S.): Designs, manufactures, and sells workstations and servers used to maintain integrated computer networks. Sun outsources the manufacture of many of its computer components.
Tokyo Electric Power (Japan): Provides electric power services, primarily to the Tokyo community. It maintains almost a monopoly in its service area.
Toyota Motor (Japan): Manufactures automobiles and offers financing services to its customers.
Required – Use whatever clues you can to match the companies in the attached doucment with the firms listed above. Provide a document with an explanation of how you matched the companies listed above with the finanicial statements listed above.
