This is your second interview with a prestigious brokerage firm for a job as an equity analyst. You survived the morning interviews with the department manager and the vice president of equity. Everything has gone so well that they want to test your ability as an analyst. You are seated in a room with a computer and a list with the names of two companies – Ford (stock symbol F) and Microsoft (stock symbol MSFT) and are asked to do the following analysis including computing stock ratios for F and MSFT, comparing and contrasting those ratios, and analyzing the performance of the stocks versus the industry averages.
Complete the following tasks and write a four- to five-page report on your findings, including the analysis in Questions 2 and 3 below.
1. Compute ratios by following the below directions:
Navigate to Morningstar (http://www.morningstar.com/). In the Quote box at the top of the page, enter each stock symbol, choose your companies, and click on the Financials tab. You will see underneath the Financials tab the three financial statements (Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow). An Export button is to the far right. Download the income statement and balance sheet financial statements for each company.