Fundamentals of Financial Accounting 4th Edition by Fred Phillips,Robert Libby,Patricia Libby

Exercise 8

Internet-Based Team Research: Examining an Annual Report
As a team, select an industry to analyze. Using your Web browser, each team member should access the annual report or 10-K for one publicly traded company in the industry, with each member selecting a different company. (See S1-3 in Chapter 1 for a description of possible resources for these tasks.)
Required:
1. On an individual basis, each team member should write a short report that incorporates the following:
a. Has the company declared cash or stock dividends during the past three years
b. What is the trend in the company's EPS over the past three years
c. Compute and analyze the return on equity ratio over the past two years.
2. Then, as a team, write a short report comparing and contrasting your companies using these attributes. Discuss any patterns across the companies that you as a team observe. Provide potential explanations for any differences discovered.