Financial Case Study: Google Inc.

When analysts question a firm’s earnings quality, it raises concerns regarding under or over aggressive accounting practices that may be allowing the firm to manipulate the earnings. Earnings quality is defined as the strength of the current earnings in being used to predict future earnings and cash flows. Since earning quality is indicative of future performance, analysts are more likely to address issues that have substantial impact on the earnings quality. An issue arises when the nature of the earnings is questioned. While permanent earnings are part of normal operations, any irregular, one time earnings can skew the earnings, making the firm look more profitable than it is. This is due to the inability to recreate similar one-time transactions that will give rise to such numbers. Investors prefer predictable

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.

Pro forma financial statements show us what end result of each of our choices will be, therefore allowing us to choose the safest choice when analuzing all other choices

Every year, corporations work with designers to create and distribute their most important document of the year: the annual report. If produced effectively, this document, marked by high production values, massive printing expense, and the collective work of designers, corporate communication teams, writers, models and photographers, serves to persuade a shareholder audience that the investment choices they have made are wise, that the company reflects the values of their investors, and that investors should, above all, not divest themselves of the company’s stock. Annual reports serve not only to communicate the financial health of a company to their audience, but act as a bridge between a corporation and a concerned shareholder. And in times of turmoil (such as the economic crash experienced in North America in the fall of 2008), they must be especially effective in communicating a company’s identification and consubstantiality (Burke, 1969) with their audience’s ethos.

The most important thing to any company’s stakeholders is high-quality reporting of its financial statements. Investors, for instance, need to know the truth about a company in order to make an informed decision on whether to make private investment, buy stock or bonds. However, for stakeholders to get the truth about a company, they need to read and understand management’s discussion and analysis, the president’s letter, the notes, as well as the financial statements. Conversely, financial statements must be accompanied with disclosures to prevent them from misleading the stakeholders.

Google Inc., American search engine company founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Google handled 70 percent of worldwide online search requests, placing it at the heart of most Internet users’ experience. Even though Google’s essential core business is search service, it now offers more than 50 percent Internet services and products from Gmail and online document creation to software for mobile phones and tablet computers. Google successfully maintained its core competence meanwhile expanded its business to advertisement and application three major core businesses. Its success in market levitates Google’s growth by acquiring other tech companies as a way of horizontal integration. For example, its 2012 acquisition of Motorola Mobility put it in the position to sell hardware in the form of mobile phones. Google’s broad product portfolio and size make it one of the top influential conglomerate companies in the high-tech market place. Google plays a very vital role in ICT ecosystem and it is one of the forces that enhance the growth of entire ICT ecosystem. For further illustrating the ICT ecosystem, I chose Apple and Comcast as device and Internet infrastructure firm to compare and contrast against Google.

The most important role of financial reports is to effectively communicate financial information to outsiders in a timely and credible manner (FASB, 1984). Earnings are vital in financial statements because earnings represent the company’s value. Investors and creditors always look to

This paper will analyze these views as they apply to the discloser of segment information for public entities as required by topic 280 of the FASB accounting standards codification, and discussed in Statement of Financial Standards No. 131 (“SFAS 131). The paper is structured as follows: Section II provides an overview of the objective and general purpose of financial reporting and the qualitative characteristics off useful financial information as determined by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”), section III introduces the concept of segment reporting and outlines the requirements for disclosures of segment information for public companies, section IV evaluates the relevance of

Google, Apple, Facebook and each have different business models. Each company focuses on different things that makes them unique and stand out to their customers.

The word pro forma is a Latin term meaning “as a matter of form”. Looking at its meaning in business, financial statements are a main focus. Business pro formas are prepared in advance of a planned transaction. The pro forma statement illustrates projected earnings if a company were to sell off parts of its operation, merge with another company, or beginning a new venture. When a performance statement is used a company is able to

We have constructed pro forma financial statements based on the sales-driven estimates and interest and tax fixed burdens. The key determining factors to the accuracy of these projections are the assumptions made about revenue growth and the sales-driven accounts like cost of goods sold, current assets (viz., inventory). Also, assumptions about the company’s capital budgeting

The course project involved developing a great depth of knowledge in analyzing capital structure, theories behind it, and its risks and issues. Before I began this assignment, I knew nothing but a few things about capital structure from previous unit weeks; however, it was not until this course’s final project that came along with opening

For this research paper, I would like to select Google Inc. as a public company. This research paper would be helpful to prepare horizontal analysis of income statement and balance sheet of Google Inc. and to perform ration analysis to know the financial performance of the company.

The article discusses that in 1976 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in one case that omitted financial statement information altering a reasonable investor’s decision proves the material nature of the information. The article continues by describing that lower courts earlier ruled that all financial information whether material or not must have full disclosure in a company’s financial statements. The rejection of the lower courts’ ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court gives the investor the ability to focus on the aspects of the financial statements that are most important by allowing the elimination of minute details (Sauer 2007, 317-357). In essence, this ruling allows for the elimination of financial information below the determined materiality threshold unless otherwise required by the ruling of a regulatory body.

Furthermore, because Google’s employees d are also equity holders, morale is high and Google encourages its employees to feel a part of Google’s success.