Annual Report Analysis - United Airlines and Carnival Cruises

Because we want you to focus on discussing your companies and what the ratio analyses mean.....and not worry about designing an Excel spreadsheet, please feel free to use the attached file.   

It breaks the process down into three steps: 

Step 1 - print out the first tab's two pages & make notes on what the ratio analyses mean to you. You can type directly into the 'notes' cells, but all other cells are password protected.

Step 2 - key four years worth of selected financial data for each company into the data tab.  Type each company's name in the cells provided at the top.  If you are not using 2009-2012 financial data, replace those years with the ones you are using.  Only the shaded cells are available; all other cells are password protected. 

Step 3 - Print out tab #3....which contains selected financial ratios from pages 380-381.  These selected analyses are the minimum you should review and discuss.  You can include any other ratios/analyses in your paper that you believe are important.

NOTE 1:  If you are not familiar with how to copy the results tab into your Word document, then just be sure to upload your Excel file along with your paper.  Do not waste valuable time stressing over the copy/paste process.  Instead, create grids/tables at the end of your Word file and type selected ratio/analysis results into the table. Then, refer to your table in your discussions.  EX:  Appendix 3 displays the Working Capital trends for both companies. From these figures, it is apparent that Company 1 is in a far better position than Company 2.  

NOTE 2:  Remember to keep the tone of your paper professional, objective, and factual.  Do Not use first person (I, me, we, you, your, etc).  Provide citations for your facts and resources.  

Instead of...   As you can see in Appendix 1, Company A has a better Earnings Per Share. This tells us that... 

Reword as...    Appendix 1 contains the Earnings Per Share data. Based on the discussion of this financial ratio in Lecture ### (JWMI citation), it is apparent that Company A's trend has..... while Company B's trend has....   One potential result of these trends is that the investors of Company.....

NOTE 3:  Use the Rubric's grading criteria as a guide for creating your section headings. This way, you will not accidentally forget to cover a topic and the reader(s) of your paper do not have to hunt for your required topics.

NOTE 4:  The body of your paper should be about 8-12 pages in length.  In addition to the body of your paper, you should also have (a) Title Page, (b) Abstract (or Executive Summary) page, and (c) Reference pages.