Financial Performance Of The Companies Within Your Industry

Question 2: When comparing performance during the first five months of 2004 with performance in 2003, which warehouse shows the poorest change in performance?

In the past few years, they have experienced a significant increase in inventory days. Not having attractive inventory leads to a decrease in sales and an increase in discounts and write offs leading to further decreases in EBITDA Margins. In 2009, the inventory turnover took 215 days. This is significantly above Le Chateaus competitors, for example Reitman’s inventory took only 72 days (Annual Report 2010). This means it takes Le Chateaus three times as long to sell inventory compared to their competitors. To make matters worse, this trend has been exacerbated in recent years. Le Chateau’s turnover has ballooned to a staggering 341 days while Reitman’s has kept inventory turnover stable at only 76 days.

2. For the most recent year, what is the amount of inventory in the balance sheet? What does this amount represent?

4. What inventory method is used to value inventories? Does this method reflect current cost at year-end?

Another risk for Laramie deals with the percentage of inventory it has on hand from 2008 to support the current amount of sales. Laramie’s inventory to sales percentage increased 16.4% from 2007 to 2008. Therefore, this increase shows either that Laramie has trouble keeping inventory accounts down or net sales are slowing relevant to the amount being produced. Also, the increase shows Laramie may have overstated inventories meaning there may be an existence issue. There is a need for further attention to the potential overstatement of inventories because the increase in inventory to sales shows that Laramie is not using its resources efficiently.

|Inventory turnover |180,000/5000 |36 |N/A |Inventory turnover is calculated to determine how quickly the inventory is used based on the services rendered.|

Also, due to the requirement that AEO must enter in to production agreements with suppliers far in advance in order to guarantee inventory, they are even more exposed to fluctuations in consumer preference or economic changes such as a drop in consumer confidence or discretionary spending. AEO appears to typically have an inventory turnover ratio of approximately 6, which is lower than the industry average of 10. This means that AEO on average takes longer to sell its inventory and means that they must forecast demand effectively or risk excess inventory. In terms of a material misstatement, it is imperative that

Low Inventory Trunover: the product sits 255 days on average in inventory before being sold;

With this company the inventory management ratios further indicate that there may be an issue with inventory and inventory controls. The inventory turnover ratio is lower than the industry average and the days’ sales in inventory are high. A company wants to turn inventory quickly to reduce storage costs, and

Support: The inventory increase in 1997, YOY, was 58%. Additionally, the COGS to revenue ratio reduced from to 72% in 1997. This combination of increase in inventory and reduction in COGS as a percentage of revenue seems to indicate that the fixed costs may have been spread over a larger base through over production, thereby causing the COGS to reduce. This may be a cause for concern and could be a potential red flag.

Milligan’s Backyard Storage Kits, a mail order company, sells a variety of backyard storage unit kits and landscaping decorations to its customers. Although the company makes a profit, David Milligan, the company’s owner, realizes that he can improve his company’s operations if he better manages his inventory. Mr. Milligan requests your help in preparing an Inventory Analysis worksheet. The Inventory Analysis worksheet provides Mr. Milligan with information about his annual sales, cost of goods sold, gross profit, and markup on this products. Preparing the worksheet for Mr. Milligan requires you to insert columns, use several functions, and apply proper formatting to the

Reviewing Exhibit 1 it is indicative that each year their actual inventory ratio continued to increase as opposed to decreasing. Keeping inventory in stock is good for clients but bad for capital when it remains on the shelves and doesn’t sell as quickly as you are producing it.

❖ Historical inventory turnover rates should be analyzed so to identify the appropriate range of supplies to be on hand in each category.

Explain the possible causes of discrepancies between sales at selling price on the bar liquor stock sheet and actual sales recorded. (10)

The financial performances for the year ended 31 March 2011 to 2013 will be compared by using their annual reports.