Business Finance – Accounting Professional Assignment #2


PA 2 includes two parts: Part 1 is an evaluation of beta and WACC, and Part 2 the acquisition of data in preparation for CLA 2. You need to complete both parts in your three- to five-page, APA-formatted report to demonstrate your comprehensive evaluation of the company’s opportunity cost as well as your skills in retrieving and organizing historical data on securities for the purpose of portfolio formation.

  1. Search Yahoo Finance, or any other credible source to retrieve the most recent income statement and balance sheet for a major leveraged corporation.
    1. Provide these statements in proper format and include a screenshot of the data.
    2. Retrieve the data on the company’s historical data and calculate its annual rate of return by using adjusted closing prices for the past 20 years.
    3. Using the data on the company’s stock rate of return and the index’s rate of return, estimate the beta of the corporation. Compare this value with the value stated by the source.
    4. Retrieve the risk-free rate of return as the annual interest rate of US treasuries. Based on these values, estimate the expected annual rate of return of the corporation’s security. Compare your estimate with the expected rate of return as evaluated based on your data in Part 2.
    5. Using the financial statements mentioned above, estimate the annual rate of interest paid by the corporation (cost of debt).
      1. Additionally, find the tax rate and capitalization ratio (proportions among equity and debt). Using these values, estimate the annual weighted cost of capital (WACC) of the corporation.
  2. This part of the assignment is in preparation for CLA 2. Choose five (5) major securities from different industries, one of which can be the one you chose in Part 1 of the question.
    1. Retrieve the data on the companies’ historical data and calculate annual rate of return for the past 20 years for each security.