This case provides financial statement data for nine companies from nine different industries from Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ Net Advantage financial database. Using knowledge of the industries’ financial characteristics and financial ratios, the case asks students to match each of the nine financial statement data sets to an appropriate industry. The case provides common-sized income statements (all items scaled by revenues), common-size balance sheets (all items scaled by total assets), and selected financial ratios for the nine companies. All data were averaged over three years 2011-2013 to remove the influence of one-time items and outliers.
Students must use financial ratio analysis and knowledge of the financial characteristics of different industries to identify each industry from the financial data of a representative company from the industry. The case has been used in the first financial accounting course in the Thunderbird MBA program (after financial ratios have been covered) to apply financial statement analysis in an interesting way. It has also been used in Executive Education programs as a short team exercise.
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