...Review of Financial Statements University of Phoenix FIN324 Financial Analysis for Managers Joseph Brennan Introduction It is said that companies will come and go, and those that survive and left standing will teach other companies, how their survived. We will take two companies; UPS and Ebay, Inc break them down and show you how they got their start. In our paper, it will also be discussed and show a review of their financial statements from each one. The point is to get a better picture of where a company started, the competition it endured, and the money that was possibility projected for the start. This paper will also show how auditors are essential to the running of any company. Review of Financial Statements Brief overview UPS, a delivery service, has been around for about 100 years. James E. Casey started the company on $100 borrowed from a friend of his. Casey, who was 19 years old when he started UPS, had worked for delivery services before and wanted to start a better delivery system of his own. The American Messenger company, what UPS was previously called, started in Seattle, Washington and had many competitors in the beginning. His business not only survived among them, but thrived (UPS, n.d.). Today the company serves over 200 countries delivering “goods, funds, and information” (UPS, n.d., ¶ 1). UPS has several stores located in these countries, including the United States, where people can not only have their packages sent, but they can also buy...
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...Assignment 2 — Session 3 (Spring) ------------------------------------------------- Top of Form Bottom of Form If this is your first time using the Online Learning Environment, check out the Course Orientation and the quick tutorials in the Support Centre. General assignment FAQs can be found in your Assignment Submission/Group Work area. Prepare your answers to these assignment questions in Word and save them as one Word document on your hard drive. For the recommended format and filename, see the Assignment Submission/Group Work/FAQ area. If this assignment Word file requires you to paste Excel.xls sections or other files, you are strongly advised to refer to the pages How To/Use Software/Excel, Word, or both, to ensure you successfully submit your complete assignment. When your file is complete and you are ready to submit it for marking, select your Assignment Submission/Group Work area. For help, refer to the quick tutorial, “Submit assignments”. Question 1 (5 marks) (Multiple choice)(1 mark each) Note: For multiple-choice questions, select the best answer. Answer each item by giving the number of your choice. Incorrect answers will be marked as zero. Multiple-choice questions must be completed in your Assignment Submission section. This portion of the assignment will be automatically graded. Do not include your answers in your Word document as they will not be graded. a. Which of the following situations would lead to an auditor increasing auditor business risk...
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...trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything. Our Marketplace On an average day, there are millions of items listed on eBay. People come to the eBay marketplace to buy and sell items in thousands of categories including antiques and art, books, business & industrial, cars & other vehicles, clothing & accessories, coins, collectibles, crafts, dolls & bears, electronics & computers, home furnishings, jewelry & watches, movies & DVDs, music, musical instruments, pottery & glass, real estate, sporting goods & memorabilia, stamps, tickets, toys & hobbies and travel. Members from all over the world buy and sell on eBay. Currently, eBay has local sites that serve Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. In addition, eBay has a presence in Latin America and China through its investments in MercadoLibre.com and EachNet, respectively. eBay offers a wide variety of features and services that enable members to buy and sell on the site quickly and conveniently. Buyers have the option to purchase items in auction-style format or items can be purchased at fixed price through a feature called Buy-It-Now. In addition, items at fixed price are also available Half.com, an eBay company. eBay is dedicated to its community of members, and has numerous services which enhance the trading experience. Our marketplace services include: online...
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...Managerial Analysis By: Aneli, Jeanille, Monica, and Daniel Contents Company Overview…….……………………….....……Page 3 History...…………………………………………….……….…Page 4 Historic Timeline………………….…………….…..…….Page 5 Financial Overview...…………………….…………….…Page 6 SWOT Analysis…………………….……………..….…..….Page 7 Working at eBay......................….............Page 9 International Locations……………………………..….Page 10 Company Overview EBay is the largest online marketplace in the world. EBay has became one of the most popular auction sites we know of today. One can find more than 18,000 categories of merchandise on eBay, including big-ticket items such as cars and real estate. EBay is not so much an e-commerce site as it is a trading community, where buyers are sellers find one another and conduct transactions. It currently has approximately 88 million active users around the world. The company has since expanded by acquiring innovative businesses, such as Shopping.com, Stub Hub, Bill Me Later and others, which have positioned the company as the global leader in e-commerce and payments. They introduced PayPal which makes it easy and quick to send and receive payments online. They have also acquired Skype, Rent.com, and Half.com. Throughout the years, eBay has accomplished many things. In 1998, the eBay Foundation was established. It engages eBay employees through charitable giving and volunteerism. The eBay community has raised more than $165 million for charity and more than 18,000...
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...eBay, Inc. (2002) Overview eBay 2002 Founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll, the eBay online marketplace was developed in order to provide individuals a place to sell goods and services. eBay became a phenomenon that attracted some 10 million auctions in its first three years. This success provided eBay the necessary foundation to complete an initial public offering (IPO) in 1998. eBay’s online auction concept is relatively simple. Sellers register with eBay and use its suite of online tools to place nearly any item up for sale. Buyers navigate eBay’s vast array of categories or use search functionality to find goods or services that they wish to bid on. Once the auction is won, the buyer may use PayPal, the online payment service, to complete the transaction. Perhaps the most powerful part of the eBay process lies with the feedback scores that are given by both buyer and seller following the completion of the transaction. Feedback scores are public information and allow other buyers and sellers to determine whether a person is worthy of doing business with or not. A negative feedback on eBay is akin to having a bad credit score with a bank. By providing a marketplace for “new and scarce goods, end-of-life products, and used and vintage items,” eBay provides a valuable service in which they attempt to “make inefficient markets more efficient.[1]” While other Internet business models have failed in recent years...
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...fixed prices: 1. Expand into New Markets: With the shrinking market of auction bidders on eBay and a growing market of fixed price buyers, customers may not prefer to go in the direction of purchasing goods in an online auction. Since, in an online auction the customer has to wait till the end of the auction to see which buyer with the highest bid wins that item. Whereas, in a fixed price type of format, there are no bids placed and the price remains constant. Customers may prefer the idea of price stability over waiting to see if they get the item as they may be time-sensitive and want the item right way. Therefore, eBay may want to focus and expand its market to customers who do not prefer online auctions. 2. Fixed price “Buy-It-Now” format is beginning to dominate eBay and is a key to future growth. Fixed price items make up of 42% of the gross merchandise sold on eBay. Over the past six years, this fixed price format has been growing at a faster rate than auctions. (Trouble at eBay) 3. Meet consumer expectations in the marketplace by matching its competitors who also offer products at fixed prices online through their websites. Customers who are not interested in purchasing goods in online auctions will then purchase goods from eBay at fixed prices. Since eBay acts as the ‘middle man’ the concept of fixed prices allows customers to purchase goods offered by other retailers through eBay instead of customers visiting other retailer’s websites. Therefore, attracting more customers...
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...eBAY INC. ANNOUNCES FIRST QUARTER 2007 FINANCIAL RESULTS - Reports Record Q1 Net Revenues of $1.77 Billion - Delivers Q1 GAAP Diluted EPS of $0.27 and Non-GAAP Diluted EPS of $0.33 - Raises Full Year Guidance San Jose, Calif, April 18, 2007 — eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY; www.ebay.com) reported financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2007. eBay reported record consolidated Q1-07 net revenues of $1.77 billion, representing a growth rate of 27% year over year. GAAP operating income was $468 million, an increase of 45% year over year, and represented 26.5% of net revenues. Non-GAAP operating income in Q1-07 was $593 million, representing a 33.6% operating margin and a 29% year-over-year increase. GAAP net income in Q1-07 increased 52% year over year to $377 million, or $0.27 earnings per diluted share. Non-GAAP net income increased 34% year over year to $460 million, or $0.33 earnings per diluted share. GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share increased 59% and 39% year over year, respectively. The company purchased approximately 10 million shares of its common stock at a total cost of approximately $333 million during the quarter and may purchase up to an additional $2.0 billion of common stock through January 2009 under its stock repurchase program. “This first quarter of 2007 was a very strong one for the company,” said eBay Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer, Meg Whitman. “The strength of our core businesses, as well as the significant traction we’re beginning...
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...Strayer University BUS 557: Financial Accounting Prepared for: Professor William Blix, CPA, ABD, MBA, CISA, CIA, CBA 03/18/2013 • History of Amazon versus eBay • In 1994, Jeff Bezos started Amazon out of his home garage in Washington. Nick Hanauer, a businessman believed in Bezos’s business plans and invested $40,000 in the venture. In 1995, Amazon began to sell books online. Due to unattractive website, it caused the business to start out on a shaky ground. Tom Alburg, another businessman, decided to invest $100,000 to help the company funded a better looking website and hosting capabilities. The business took off ever since. By 1997, amazon.com generated $15.7 million in revenue. The company went public the same year. One year later, in 1998, Amazon added more items on its website. It also sells software, electronics, video games, toys, and home improvement items. Amazon attracts customers all over the country2. Amazon hasn’t released information about who their suppliers are. But it has been known that oversea suppliers manufacture thousands of Amazon.com products (Bernton, 2012). Ebay was introduced to consumers around the same time as Amazon. In 1995, Ebay’s founder Pierre Omidyar started a company called ebay from his home in San Jose, CA. It was more like an online garage sale when it started. Items on eBay are listed by categories, anyone with an eBay account can bid on any items they...
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...Amazon versus Ebay Amazon versus Ebay Analyze each company’s history, product / services, major customers, major suppliers, and leadership and provide a synopsis of each company. Seattle based Amazon.com was founded in July, 1994, but it was introduced to the world in June, 1995 by its CEO Jeff Bezos. Bezos who was a hedge fund manager in New York left to head west after coming across a finding that the usage of the internet is growing 2300 percent a month. He came up with a plan to get his own retail business online, and headed to Seattle to begin his dream. He started with only 3 employees working out of a garage. Jeff Bezos was able to get Kleiner Perkins Caulfied & Byers to fund Amazon. Some of Amazon.com products include a variety from books, to CDs, videos, and video games. Amazon product line also includes groceries, supplies for pets, greeting cards, and has auctions. A major supplier for Amazon is Ingram, a book distributor, who is still the provider for 60 percent of the books. Amazon is also allied with sites such as Yahoo, Excite, GeoCities, and Netscape. Amazon.com also has links that can be used for household purchases such as groceries and prescriptions. Bezos leadership is demonstrated by observing his comfortableness when he is around the people he addresses on a regular basis from customers, to investors, and the employees. Other leadership qualities of Bezos include his understanding of e-commerce, being focused, having an entrepreneurial team to back...
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...executives, financial institutions, and accounting firms. But is the synthetic lease a panacea for the corporate executive faced with a leasing decision? Are they the perfect solution for keeping real estate assets oil the company balance sheet? Are there any drawbacks to a synthetic lease? Before entering into a synthetic lease, the corporate tenant should know the potential shortcomings of a synthetic lease as well as when and when not to use one. EBay - Enron Under a synthetic lease, a company designs a special purpose entity (SPE). The SPE exists exclusively to supply the parent company with an operating lease. Basically, it keeps debt off the parent company's books under existing accounting rules. The SPE is regarded as part of the parent company for tax purposes (Edman, 2011). A synthetic lease allows a company to keep debt off the books, but at the same time, is able to remove interest and depreciation as if they had bought and mortgaged the place. The parent company gets the tax benefits of ownership but suppresses the liability. As with operating leases, only a footnote disclosure is required. If this kind of financial engineering appears suggestive of Enron, that's because it is. SPE's are virtually identical with the shell corporations that set off the Enron cataclysm (Edman, 2011). Synthetic leases are perfectly legal. Under existing accounting, synthetic leases are legal, but they are...
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...(Yao, 2009). Online auction industry mainly consists of eBay, Yahoo, and Amazon. Also, there are many smaller online auction websites that target on specific products and market segments. The risk of entry by potential competitors in online auction industry is moderate because of the small initial capital and technology investments required. The bargaining power of buyers is low and bargain power of suppliers is high. The threat of substitutes is moderate as online auction industry has unique person-to-person business model. The rivalry among existing firms is high due to the high demand volume and high operating cost, but none of them will lower prices to compete in price wars. eBay is the current leader of online auction industry with 94.5 million active users and total $9.2 billion net revenue at the end of 2010 (eBay, 2010). eBay has been successful because it focuses on person-to-person auction platform that allows buyers and sellers to access and make efficient trades. Yahoo and Amazon, however, effectively consolidated their resources from all of their business sections to create their strategic advantages. For instance, Amazon had consolidated its 8.3 million registered customers and emailed them all at once, promoting its auction insurance program when it launched its auction site (Yin, 2007). Introduction Online auction industry mainly consists of eBay, Yahoo, and Amazon. Porter’s five forces analysis indicates that online auction industry has both...
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...Strategic Position is how well an organization matches its internal resources and capabilities to its external environment. A SWOT analysis is helpful to summarise the key issues arising from an analysis of the business environment and the capabilities of an organization to gain an overall picture of its strategic position. This can also be useful as a basis to generate strategic options and to assess future courses of action. A SWOT is company specific as opposed to the Porters five forces which is industry specific. The aim is to identify the extent to which strengths and weaknesses are relevant to, and are capable of dealing with changes that take place in the business environment. Internal Resources and Capabilities Financial Resources Ebay is a Public Listed Company with corporate responsibilities to its shareholders. In 2006, it earned a gross profit of $4.7 billion and its total assets were $13.5 billion. This financial strength gives it opportunities to invest in activities to increase its financial strength through growth into related and other industries, global markets and also to investing in technology to increase customer satisfaction. It also allows it to invest in marketing to attract further customers and to invest in fraud prevention to protect its valuable intangible asset, its brand name. The Value Chain If organizations are to achieve competitive advantage by delivering value to customers, managers need to understand which activities their...
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...eBay: “The world’s largest online marketplace”- A Case Study J.Gopalkrishnan* V.K Gupta** Abstract eBay, Inc. is the largest and most popular marketplace on the Internet, allowing members to buy and sell almost anything. Launched in 1995, about 147 million people now use eBay. An estimated 430,000 people in the United States make all or most of their living by selling on eBay. eBay’s online payment service, called PayPal, enables transactions nearly anywhere in the world. eBay proclaims “trust” between buyers and sellers as the key to the success of the marketplace. eBay is the “The world’s Online Marketplace”, which is its positioning statement, and it means many things about the company’s identity. It enables trade on local, national and international basis, with a diverse and passionate community of individuals and small businesses. eBay offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day. The objective at eBay was to “to develop the work ethic and culture of eBay as a fun, open and trusting environment and to keep the organization focused on the big picture objectives and key priorities. The company market capitalization had surpassed that of even Amazon.com, making it the “world’s most valuable Internet retailer”. Pierre Omidyar, founder, is focused to achieve excellence in strategic management for improving the company’s strategy, sustaining the company’s growth and business performance, and potentially expanding from online auctions into general “etailing”...
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...Executive officer since 1996, and with a brief interruption in 1999-2000, he has also been the President of Amazon.com, Inc. since its founding. Under the “AMZN’ symbol, its common stock is listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Amazon.com, Inc. began on the World Wide Web in 1995, with its main customer base being “consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators”. Amazon.com, Inc. is managed on a geographic basis with North America and International being its low operating segments. For its consumers, the website offers millions of products sold by Amazon.com itself and by third parties. As of December 31, 2013, Amazon.com employs over 117,000 full and part-time people. GAAP In accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) of the United States, Amazon.com, financial statements and accompanying notes, the required estimates and assumptions that may affect the company’s reported assets and liabilities, and its revenues and expenses, are disclosed. However, free cash flow, a non-GAAP measure, is utilized by Amazon.com, as a long-term financial focus. Free cash flow is defined as “net cash provided by operating activities less cash expenditures for purchases of property and equipment, including internal-use software and website development.” This definition meets that of the SEC regulations and its conditions for use of non-GAAP measures. In its use of the non-GAAP measure of free cash flow, Amazon.com, Inc. believes that it offers a more...
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...*Institute of Management, Nirma University of Science & Technology, Ahmedabad. E-mail: jaya_gopalkrishnan2000@yahoo.com **Indian Institute of Management, Indore eBay: “The world’s largest online marketplace”- A Case Study J.Gopalkrishnan* V.K Gupta** Abstract eBay, Inc. is the largest and most popular marketplace on the Internet, allowing members to buy and sell almost anything. Launched in 1995, about 147 million people now use eBay. An estimated 430,000 people in the United States make all or most of their living by selling on eBay. eBay’s online payment service, called PayPal, enables transactions nearly anywhere in the world. eBay proclaims “trust” between buyers and sellers as the key to the success of the marketplace. eBay is the “The world’s Online Marketplace”, which is its positioning statement, and it means many things about the company’s identity. It enables trade on local, national and international basis, with a diverse and passionate community of individuals and small businesses. eBay offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day. The objective at eBay was to “to develop the work ethic and culture of eBay as a fun, open and trusting environment and to keep the organization focused on the big picture objectives and key priorities. The company market capitalization had surpassed that of even Amazon.com, making it the “world’s most valuable Internet retailer”. Pierre Omidyar, founder, is focused to achieve excellence in strategic...
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