Identify a firm following the instructions below.

What does this mean in practice?
1. Identify a firm following the instructions below.
2. Download its financial statements and share price history.1
3. Construct simplified financial statements like the ones in the textbook or in the Tutorial
exercise from Week 5 (Seminar 4).
4. Use the data from the financial statements to calculate the various financial ratios covered in
class and in the tutorial. Even if these ratios are available already calculated, you must show
that you calculated them yourself from the underlying financial data.
5. Interpret and discuss the ratios, clearly articulating what they mean, how we should use them to assess the status or performance of the firm, and any weaknesses, limitations or alternative interpretations of the ratios. Note that to do this, you will need to think like an analyst and learn a little bit about your chosen firm, its business, its stage of maturity, any issues affecting
its performance or its financial decisions.
6. In the context of point 5 above, you may also want to look at peers and competitors of the
firm – you do not need to do the detailed description of how you obtained ratios for these peers; in case you decide to calculate/obtain them from a data source, you just need to name the source.
7. Conclude with some final observations about the firm – if you were an analyst, would you recommend investing in this firm, or are there any issues of concern that you think need to be addressed based on your calculations?
How to identify a firm
The firm should be publicly listed with a sufficient (at least three years) history of financial statements available. To select the firm, you need to refer to your initials and find the closest possible match to a ticker symbol. E.g., if Galileo Galilei was a student in our class, he would look for a company with ticker symbol closest to GG, which happens to be the symbol of the NYSE-listed firm Goldcorp. However, if that symbol was not in use or the company did not have a sufficient history of data available, then he could also include his middle initials VB and look for anything close to GVBG. In this case, he may settle on GV, which is the symbol for the American Stock Exchange listed Goldfield Corporation. If none of these were available, he might try GF or GH, and so on, to stay as close as possible to his initials.

The marks will be based on:
• Well demonstrated and explained data work (40%)
• Understanding, Analysis and Argument (40%)
• Organisation and Presentation (20%)