Posted: February 12th, 2015

Nike Company

Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

FNCE-302: Project Two

Fall 2014

Due Date: To Be Announced In Class

Make sure you have gotten my approval for your company – otherwise you may have a difficult time with Part III. This project carries twice the weight of the other two projects since it is more time intensive. Note that the reference to financial strengths used does not refer to the Financial Strength labeled sections of ratios – it refers to all non-valuation ratios.

Portfolio123 is a premium screener, but it is becoming too difficult to access. We will still use this, but you can only receive a 15 day free trial so do not sign-up for the free trial until you know the due date of this assignment.

Part I [60%]

Discuss the financial strengths of your company in terms of the accounting fundamentals, not market price behavior. You must rely on Reuters for ratio information since the information available from Yahoo and other sites is incomplete and sometimes inaccurate. Financial statements can be obtained from MarketWatch since this provides the Dow Jones information feed. Your focus should be on ratios since dollar numbers are rarely relevant.

Your analysis and discussion must include but is not limited to the following:

1. A discussion of the use of the non-market based ratios and how these ratios should be evaluated.
2. Whether your company’s financial ratios should be compared to one or more key competitors, the industry, the sector or a broad measure (S&P500 on Reuters).
3. A discussion on why you believe the financial strengths of the company you have identified are relevant to an investor (e.g., put yourself in the role of an investment advisor and provides a convincing argument on why the financial measures you have highlighted point to a good company for investment).

Part II [20%]

Switch to Portfolio123’s screener since the variables available for screening on this site use the Reuters database to perform screening. You need to do the following, explain what you are doing in each part:

1. Translate your identified financial strengths in Part I to quantifiable criterion that can be used in the screener. You need to explain why your translation reflects the strengths you have identified in Part I.
2. Develop a screen that identifies companies that have at least the same (if not better) level of performance in your criteria above.

You need to provide me with a screen capture of the screen you have designed.

Part III [20%]

If you have screened correctly, you will have a small number of companies (no more than 50). You can then draw upon various reports tabs to obtain a view of various financial characteristics of these companies.

Use this information and individual analysis to identify the companies (if such exist) that appear to be superior to your original company. You should explain why you feel the new companies are superior or, if you feel your original company is superior, you need to discuss why it is superior.