David Jones Annual Profit Report 2011

The weekly performance of IBM stock presented a contestant growth. One highlight of the falling of stock price in the 6th week in the investment period was when IBM presented the 3rd quarter financial report. The investors weren’t satisfied with the profit report which they expected to be better especially when other IT companies were doing well in the 3rd quarter. One mistake I made was that I didn’t follow closely to the financial report of the company; therefore, I missed the peak of the stock price. From this experience, I learned that financial reports and current news are important indicators of the stock price. By following closely to the current event and analyzing the financial report, investors can maximize the profit and also become more familiar to the market.

The following financial report provides an analysis of the financial ratios of David Jones with its close competitor in the retail sector, Myer. The financial ratios analyzed include profitability ratios, leverage ratios, efficiency ratios and market ratios for the two companies. The analysis utilizes individual company time-series analysis as well as industry cross-sectional analysis with the aim of determining the competitiveness of David Jones relative to its close competitor Myer.

The picture above reflects the stock price in dollars of our company over the frame of 10 periods. While the stock price of our company has thoroughly and exponentially increased in the overall time period, there are two small dips in the 2nd and 3rd time period. One of the few reasons for these dips could be the reformulation of the brand. The brand previously contained alcohol in its original formulation. Only few of these kinds of changes are positively perceived in the market. Hence, with such drastic changes people might be uncertain if they want to buy the stock price reducing the demand of the stock, decreasing the stock price of Allstar.

The graph below is per date 22/01/2013 which shows the present share value of Harvey Norman in regarding a comparison to last 12 months. Surprisingly the value of each share went down since September 2012 which was reached to its lowest point in the end of 2012.

June reflected a drop in price for both companies, resulting from the Government funding changes to the Dementia Supplement with August realising an increase in price for REG after the announcement of the Supreme Court decision to uphold REG’s objection to a notice of assessment of stamp duty by the State Revenue Office (SRO) reducing their unpaid debt to SRO by A$19 million, whereas in contrast JHC realised a drop in price as a result of significant changes in substantial share

The cause of poor transparency, however, is less important than its effect on a company 's ability to give investors the critical information they need to value their investments. If investors neither believe nor understand financial statements, the performance and fundamental value of that company remains either irrelevant or distorted. Mounting evidence suggests that the market gives a higher value to firms that are upfront with investors and analysts. Transparency pays, companies with fuller disclosure win more trust from investors. Relevant and reliable information means less risk to investors and thus a lower cost of capital, which naturally translates into higher valuations. Of course, there are two ways to interpret this evidence. One is that the market rewards more transparent companies with higher valuations because the risk of unpleasant surprises is believed to be lower. The other interpretation is that companies with good results usually release their earnings earlier. Companies that are doing well have nothing to hide and are eager to publicize their good performance. It is in their best

Such an intense focus has been placed on quarterly earnings as an indication of a company’s success by everyone from analysts to executives that ethics have for the most part been thrown out the window, sacrificed to the all important number, i.e. earnings per share. This is the theory in Alex Berenson’s book “The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America.” This number has become part of a game to be played, a figure to be manipulated – beat the number and Wall Street all but throws a parade, miss it and a company’s stock may be abandoned. Take into account the incentives that executives have to beat the number and one can find plenty of reasons to manage earnings.

Prospective investors need information to predict a company's potential for success, profitability and dividends based on the profits estimated in statement of financial position in order for decision-making. Current investors are also interested on the estimated profits for the future in order to determine whether or not they should continue to invest in an organisation.

Although 2012 has seen some increase in the industry revenue, IBISWorld predicted continuous decline until 2014 (Outlaw, 2012). David Jones announced in its ASX Release 40% decline in profit-after-tax in 2012 is expected, partly associated with costs involved in its new strategic initiatives (David Jones, 2012). Myer, David Jones’ closest competitors, experienced decreased total sales of 3.8% and stated in

During the 1990’s Ruttenberg’s common stock was one of the most popular securities on Wall Street. Analysts and investors were impressed with the company’s 1998 fourth quarter operating results which included increases in same-store sale for twenty one quarters straight.

Baruch Lev and Feng Gu authors of “The End of Accounting and The Path Forward for Investors and Managers” indicate that over the past 110 years, the structure and content of financial reports has not changed, and that the role that these reports play in influencing the decisions of investors has greatly diminished. Lev and Gu make a case that non-transaction events that are not captured by the financial reports such as those disclosed through 8-k filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) have a greater impact on stock prices, and thus more useful to investors. In addition, they suggest that one of reasons for the decline in usefulness of financial reports stems from the increase of estimates that has made its way into these reports (Lev and Gu 2016).

The recent decline in share price reflects that the market recognizes the declining profitability of the industry.

This paper examines the quality of earnings for major corporations. The quality of earnings is an ongoing operation of corporations and other business alike, because the value of a business is the current and future earnings of the firm (Schroeder et al, 2011). These earnings are usually updated quarterly by a firm’s financial analyst, which provide this for investors and other users of financial information to make decisions about a firm’s financial position in the market. However, there are some differences in the quality of earnings throughout various industries, countries and by competitors. This paper evaluates the quality of earnings for one major corporation for an assessment of its current and future earnings.

In the underlying paper the author re-examines the conservatism principle and its asymmetric effects on earnings. With samples consisting of all firm-year observations from 1963 to 1990 with returns data on the CRSP NYSE/AMEX Monthly files and respective accounting data on the COMPUSTAT Annual Industrial and Research files, he formulates and tests four major hypotheses to find evidence for his predictions. At first he chracterizes “conservatism in accounting as the more timely recognition in earnings of bad news regarding future cash flows than good news”.1 In his first hypothesis he predicts a more sensitive response of earnings towards bad news in comparison to good news, proxied by negative and positve annual stock returns. His second prediction is that earnings are more timely than cash flow, indicating a stronger association of accruals to conservative accounting effects. Hypotheses three and four account for a test on the

The purpose of accounting is to consolidate and process a wide range of financial information to convey the financial health of the company mainly to the owners and potential investors. However, for years, large listed UK firms have been using earnings management to manipulate their earnings in order to meet the pre-determined forecasts for a variety of reasons. Here, it is essential to consider the earnings game. As Walkers (2013) suggests, the earnings game is to do with the directors negotiating with analysts in order to ensure they issue reasonable forecasts so that these can easily be achieved. It is when firms notice that they might struggle to meet these forecasts when they use the principle of earnings management. This practice is going against the initial objective of helping business managers’ reach a decision on the most optimal way of running the business. Instead, these managers are falsifying financial numbers in order to receive incentives. One of the incentives includes receiving bonuses when the company’s performance reaches a specified target. The aim of the essay therefore is to explore the extent to which large listed UK firms manage earnings to meet City earnings expectations, the various techniques used by firms, and whether or not investors should worry about firms employing earnings management to inflate financial figures.