Purpose of Assignment

Students should understand how to use the financial information and tools learned in the class on a public company, obtain public company SEC reports, and use that data to calculate a company’s financial ratios and their comparison to industry or competitor standards.

Assignment Steps

Resources: Tutorial help on Excel^® and Word functions can be found on the Microsoft^®Office^® website. There are also additional tutorials via the web that offer support for office products.

Select one of the publicly traded corporations listed below and obtain the most current SEC Form 10-K (annual financial report) from the company’s web site (Do not use the Annual Report that is sent to shareholders):

• Lowes Corporation

Calculate and analyze the following ratios for your selected company for the last two years from the SEC Form 10-K:

• Return on Assets
• Net Profit Margin
• Return on Equity (Use three ratio DuPont method)