Essay about Google Analytics

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.

The accounting restatement was unfortunate for Dollar General but I don't believe it will have had that big of an impact when they look back on it in the future. Their strategies allowed them to keep a profitable company thriving even despite the investigation

Refer to the Dow Chemical financial statements for 2008 in answering the following: 1. Who are Dow’s external auditors? Describe the two opinion letters that Dow received for 2008. In your own words, explain what these opinions mean. Why are the opinions dated several weeks after Dow’s year end? 2. Use a spreadsheet to construct common-size income

There are a number of areas on the earnings statement that provide management with opportunities for influencing the outcome of reported earnings.

2. (TCO 2) What are the four basic financial statements? Describe the balance sheet, and explain why it is important

The auditor acknowledges that they did not perform an audit the Board of Education financial statements. The auditing body approves their work as being above par and how they achieve their objective of understanding the financial statements of the county. The auditor also provides an overview of the contents they have included in the final report. They also display strict adherence to the regulations set by the GASB. (Granof, 2011)

e. Who are General Mills external auditors? Describe the two "opinion" letters that General Mills received in 2006. In your own words, what do these opinions mean? Why are both opinions dated several months after General Mills' year end?

Companies often try to keep accounting earnings growing at a relatively steady pace in an effort to avoid large swings in earnings from period to period. They also try to manage earnings targets. Reflect on these practices and discuss the following in your discussion post.

Using a sample data comprised 297 NYSE and American Stock Exchange companies for 1977 to 1980-time period, indicating twelve quarterly announcements for each of the company. MacKinlay (1997) utilised 30 companies which comprised into Dow Jones Industrial Index, as a sample to test the impact of quarterly earnings announcements to stock prices. The researcher examined totally 600 quarterly announcements, thus MacKinlay (1997) obtained stock price response separately to bad news, good news and no news cases of earnings per share (EPS) announcements.

The case study General Mills Inc. - Understanding Financial Statements focuses on the most basic idea of finance analysis. This case is a brief look into the language that is used in the finance world and a start to interaction with auditors. In this case, KPMG LLP, the public accounting firm that was auditing their statements, had sent two opinion letters. The first letter was ensuring that both parties were aware that General Mills had internal control over financial reporting. The second opinion letter stated that to auditor’s knowledge, General Mills had correctly reported its financial statements. The statements given in this case study are known as the four general financial statements. Displayed in the case are the

As stated in Exhibit 3, Earnings management is the managerial use of discretion to influence reported earnings. Within the accrual accounting system, managers have significant discretion with their firms’ accounting choices. Management has the ability to make choices that can opportunistically lead to higher or lower reported earnings. Richard 's and Ira Zar’s (CFO) actions would not change if these results were the result of GAAP flexibility because he violated the rules of accounting, the conceptual framework principle of neutrality in numerous ways to report the financial results that CA did under false pretenses. It would be one thing if CA garnered these results through legitimate business decisions versus using accounting tactics like changes in accounting estimates or outright fraud as in the use of the 35 day Month. The purpose of which was solely to allow CA to meet or exceed analysts’ estimates.

statements are an attempt to determine the significance and meaning of financial statements dataso that the forecast may be made of the prospects for future earnings, ability to pay interest and

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

Other changes arise from management decisions about using the appropriate accounting methods for preparing financial statements. There are a number of estimates made in order to prepare the financial statements at the end of each period. These estimates are based on the facts and circumstances that exist at the time, but they will change from one period to the next. Unfortunately

The reason for this kind reporting is largely due to the nature of their main capital provider, the bank. The bank is not necessarily concerned with their positive future outlook, they are likely more concerned with their debt to income ratio, equity, and liabilities. This kind of accounting information gives a better estimate if the company will be able to sufficiently meet their new obligation in the form of bank financing.