Rate of return, standard deviation, coefficient of variation  Personal Finance Problem 

  Mike is searching for a stock to include in his current stock portfolio. He is interested in Hi-Tech Inc.; he has been impressed with the company's computer products and believes Hi-Tech is an innovative market player. However, Mike realizes that any time you consider a technology stock, risk is a major concern. The rule he follows is to include only securities with a coefficient of variation of returns below 1.25. Mike has obtained the following price information for the period 2015 through 2018:

Beginning End

2015 $14.94 $20.04

2016 $20.04. $64.87

2017 $64.87. $72.91

2018 $72.91. $90.21

Hi-Tech stock, being growth-oriented, did not pay any dividends during these 4 years.

a.  Calculate the rate of return for each year, 2015 through 2018, for Hi-Tech stock.

b.  Assume that each year's return is equally probable and calculate the average return over this time period.

c.  Calculate the standard deviation of returns over the past 4 years.   (Hint: Treat this data as a sample.)

d.  Based on b and c determine the coefficient of variation of returns for the security.

e.  Given the calculation in d what should be Mike's decision regarding the inclusion of Hi-Tech stock in his portfolio?

V’s Warehouse has a market value of $880,000. The property in V’s area is assessed at 35% of the market value. The tax rate is $58.90 per $1,000 of assessed value. What is V’s property tax? (Round your answer to the nearest cent.)

For the best terms on a loan or credit card, you need a credit score above 700. To achieve this, start establishing credit now. Pay all of your bills on time. In addition, use only one-third of your available credit limit and pay off your revolving balance(s) each month. R. J. Johnson has excellent credit. She wants to purchase a piece of equipment for her business and was offered 7% for 72 months for the $49,000 unit.

What is her monthly payment by add-on method? (Round your answer to the nearest cent.)

Lego Corporation is planning on replacing all of its copiers and has decided on a model manufactured by Xerox. Lego has been offered a five-year lease, including all maintenance, for $1,000 per year for each copier. Lego has a tax rate of 25%, which results in an after-tax cost of leasing of $750 per year. Lego is also considering purchasing the machines and wants to know the annual cost of purchasing so they can compare it to the $750 after-tax cost of leasing. Each copier would have a cost of $2,500 and be depreciated straight-line over five years. A maintenance agreement would run $500 per year. Paper and toner use would be identical, regardless of whether the copiers are leased or purchased and the copier has no salvage value at the end of five years. With Lego’s 25% tax rate and a required rate of return of 9%, calculate the EAA/EAC. Should they purchase or lease?

Solve with excel and show work

Answer Choices:

$3,472.41

-$892.73

$566.88

-$355.78

Tropical Charters, based in the Bahamas, runs multi-day fishing charters for wealthy anglers. They have been very successful in their first five years in operation and Brian (the owner) is considering adding a second boat. A new 80’ Viking would cost $5,000,000 with another $1,000,000 needed to upgrade the interior to a level that would attract the wealthy clients they desire. The boat would be depreciated straight-line over 15 years, but would be sold at the end of five years, for an estimated $5,000,000. The new boat would generate estimated additional revenue of $2,000,000 per year and would have associated expenses of $625,000. No additional working capital would be necessary. The firm’s tax rate is 30% and the required rate of return is 12%. Calculate the NPV. Should the new boat be purchased?

Solve all three capital budgeting problems on one spreadsheet

Blazer Video Production is a producer of commercials and corporate information videos. They have a high-tech studio with multiple high-intensity lights. Blazer is considering switching out the lights for more energy efficient LED lights, which do not generate the tremendous amounts of heat that the current lights put out and do not require frequent bulb replacements. The new lights would cost $10,000 and would be depreciated straight-line over their five-year useful life and are expected to have no salvage value. The existing lights were purchased for $8,000 five years ago and were being depreciated straight-line over their ten-year useful life and were not expected to have any salvage value. The old lights had a longer life expectancy because of the frequent bulb replacement. The existing lights could currently be sold for $4,000. The lights are not expected to change revenues at all, but will save $2,000 per year in electricity and bulbs. The firm’s tax rate is 25% and the required rate of return is 10%. Calculate the IRR. Should Blazer purchase the replacement lights? Hint: Remember to include the difference in annual depreciation in your cash flows.

consider the differing means of debt financing available (or emerging) that may be involved in business performance and decision-making (Ch. 26, 27, 30, 31).

• What are the legal rights, responsibilities, and liabilities of parties involved with negotiable instruments, secured transactions, and debtor-creditor relationships?
• What steps should be taken to account for and safeguard a company’s rights and track its responsibilities in such relationships?

9.Executive Compensation Critics have charged that compensation to top managers in the United States is too high and should be cut back. For example, focusing on large corporations, Dara Khosrowshahi (now at Uber, formerly of Expedia) has been one of the best-compensated CEOs in the United States, earning about $95 million in 2016. Are such amounts excessive? In answering, it might be helpful to recognize that superstar athletes such as Cristiano Ronaldo, top earners in the entertainment field such as James Cameron and Oprah Winfrey, and many others at the top of their respective fields earn at least as much, if not a great deal more

what is capital as defined in the financial industry?

1.Using Carrol’s pyramid of CSR and information from the case study, identify the corporate social responsibilities of Philip Morris International in the context of its operations in North Carolina. In your view, discuss why these responsibilities are important to Philip Morris International?

The US children working in tobacco fields: 'I wanted to help my mama'

Luis is just 14 years old, but he already has an exhausting, dawn-till-dusk job. Last summer, he started working in tobacco fields in North Carolina.

Even though Luis is just a child – too young to buy cigarettes – it is legal for him to work here in the US.

The job pays about $7.25 per hour.

Monday through Saturday last summer, when he was not in school, he rose at 5am, dressed in long sleeves, jeans, boots, gloves, a hat and a plastic poncho, and waited for a van to drive him to fields as far as an hour away. He came home around 7pm. This is a typical schedule for laborers in this tough and dangerous job.

Workers in tobacco are vulnerable to heat sickness, in temperatures which regularly reach 32C (89F); they risk injuries from sharp objects; and, if the Trump administration has its way, children will return to using the most toxic agrochemicals.

Then there is the plant itself. Tobacco naturally contains water-soluble nicotine. This makes morning dew or overnight rain a vehicle for huge doses of nicotine. Workers are regularly exposed to six cigarettes’ worth of nicotine per day, one study found. This can result in acute nicotine poisoning, called green tobacco sickness, characterized by nausea, vomiting, headaches and dizziness.

“I wanted to help my mama,” said Luis. He wanted to work, he said, “to get school supplies, so she doesn’t have to waste money”. Luis is the son of a cervical cancer survivor. He started to work when his mother, a waitress, was too ill to hold a job. (The Guardian has changed the names of workers and their families in this report.)

“It’s heavy work, very hard,” said Luis’s mother. But, she said, “there’s no choice”. Children need to help buy “clothes, shoes, their own things, things they need”. She said it would be “better when they were older, but he started because I had cancer ... He was helping me as well as my older son.”

In the US, lax laws and an informal economy in which landowners are removed from hiring laborers allow teens to work growing and harvesting tobacco. This contravenes some tobacco companies’ own policies, which often prohibit children from performing hazardous work.

“There’s a lot of 14-, 15-year-olds working in the fields,” said Antonio, a 19-year-old who has done so since he was 15, a history confirmed by his mother. “They need money or they want to work,” Antonio said.

Altria, parent company of Philip Morris USA, which produces Marlboro cigarettes, said growers were “prohibited from hiring those less than 16 years of age, and may only assign hazardous duties to workers 18 and older. Both are above the legal requirements. We require parental consent for those under 18 working in tobacco farming.”

The company also said it reviewed all growers every three years. In 2017, it found only one case of child labor, in which a farmer hired two 15-year-olds.

“While the individuals were no longer employed by the grower, the contract requirements were reviewed with the grower to strengthen their understanding of the minimum age requirement,” the company said. The company also said it had hired third-party assessors to monitor labor conditions.

Miguel Coleta, director of sustainability for Philip Morris International, said the company had been “making progress in tackling complex labor issues on farms supplying to PMI and our standards exceed US in many areas”.

“Challenges remain, and PMI continues to work with Verité and the Farm Labor Practices Group on systemic issues associated with child labor, grievance mechanisms to protect workers’ rights and to achieve meaningful improvements on the ground,” said Coleta.

In 2015, PMI adopted a new leaf-buying model in the US, and it now buys through the third-party leaf buyers Alliance One International Inc and Universal Leaf North America. At the time, Human Rights Watch said the move would improve labor conditions on US farms.

The Guardian interviewed several teens, parents, and labor organizers for this story. They described a picture in which child labor was commonplace. However, many said they depended on their children’s income to make ends meet. Many of those interviewed also work in other crops, including picking cucumbers, peppers or other vegetables.

“It’s the fact that we have to do it, because there is no alternative,” said Laticia Savala, a labor organizer with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (Floc) in North Carolina. Floc does not support outlawing child labor in fields, because organizers feel it would harm families who depend on children’s income. However, needing the money does not lessen the harm.

“What mom wouldn’t want their kids studying [rather] than working in the fields?” asked Savala. “You’re forced into doing something.” If labor conditions on farms “were better, probably child labor wouldn’t exist”.

The world’s largest tobacco-producing countries span the globe. They include Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Pakistan and the United States.

Together, North Carolina and Kentucky produce 70% of the 700m pounds of tobacco grown in the US each year. Only 0.04% of US farmland grows tobacco, but the United States is still an international juggernaut, the fourth-largest producer in the world.

North Carolina is just one part of a global supply chain that feeds cigarette makers with tobacco leaf. However, the value of tobacco farming is dwarfed by the value of the global tobacco products. Tobacco farming was worth $19.1bn in 2013. Once leaf is manufactured, marketed and branded, tobacco products were worth $783bn the same year.

North Carolina’s farmers employ mostly Latin American workers, who toil in fields owned by white, ageing farmers. The US does not grant agricultural workers collective bargaining rights and workers are sometimes undocumented. Workers are vulnerable to wage theft, exploitation and dangerous working conditions.

Because children work in an informal economy, there is no data on how many might work in fields in summer months, or even when they should be in school. A 2014 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) was the first in recent memory to ignite debate about child labor in tobacco in the US. The advocacy group followed up the report in 2015, and found little had fundamentally changed in fields.

“If you appear younger than 16, they’ll ask,” said 19-year-old John about children working on the fields. “But otherwise, no,” they don’t ask. Many contractors, one mother said, encouraged children to lie about their age.

Attempts have been made to regulate tobacco growing in the past. In 2012, the Obama administration attempted to make it illegal for children younger than 16 to work in tobacco. But the Department of Labor backed down after Republicans falsely argued the measure would prevent children from working on family farms.

At the state level, as recently as 2017, the Democratic Virginia delegate Alfonso Lopez tried to introduce a bill to bar child labor on tobacco farms. He was blocked by Republicans.

“If this was your kid, would you be OK with having them work in this job?” Lopez asked at the time as the bill was shelved. “Would you? I don’t think you would. So why is it OK for kids you don’t know to do this job?”

When criticism of child labor on US farms reached its peak in 2014, Philip Morris International hired a company to audit its supply chain. It found children working in hazardous conditions on 16% of the US farms it visited.

However, auditors concluded: “The root cause of many labor related issues in the US is the lack of sustainable, reliable workforce exacerbated by poor US immigration policies.”

The US has signed an international human rights convention meant to protect children “from economic exploitation” and work likely “to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development”. To that end, it encourages trading partners to meet these standards, and publishes an annual report on the “worst forms of child labor” around the world.

One country singled out in the report was Malawi, visited by the Guardian earlier this year as part of an investigation, where children “continue to engage in the worst forms of child labor, including in the harvesting of tobacco”, the most recent report by the US Bureau of International Labor Affairs said.

The tobacco industry, through its Eliminating Child Labor in Tobacco Growing Foundation, agrees “in principle” children should be prohibited from hazardous work, “particularly the use of machinery and agrochemicals by children in tobacco farming”.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, is hoping to further deregulate farm labor. Rules put into place after the 2014 HRW report are being rolled back by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which is examining whether children should again be allowed to work with dangerous pesticides on farms.

“I’ve worked in the field as well; it’s very difficult. For a young person it’s worse,” said Antonio’s mother, a 37-year-old with three sons who works behind the counter of a rural convenience store. Teens often prefer farm work to other work, she said, “because they’re given jobs despite their age”.

Dominance of American tobacco has waned in recent decades, as the tobacco supply chain has globalized. This and the deregulation of US tobacco price controls has encouraged consolidation. Where in 1978 there were 188,000 tobacco farms, today there are around 4,200.

“A lot of times they’re underage and they lie and say they’re 16 or 17, but they’re actually 13 or 14 years [old],” Antonio’s mother said. “It’s hard, but there aren’t any more options.” She said claims that child labor was not happening on tobacco farms were “a lie”.

• The names of workers and their families have been changed

1. Broussard Skateboard's sales are expected to increase by 25% from $7.4 million in 2016 to $9.25 million in 2017. Its assets totaled $5 million at the end of 2016. Broussard is already at full capacity, so its assets must grow at the same rate as projected sales. At the end of 2016, current liabilities were $1.4 million, consisting of $450,000 of accounts payable, $500,000 of notes payable, and $450,000 of accruals. The after-tax profit margin is forecasted to be 3%, and the forecasted payout ratio is 70%. What would be the additional funds needed? Do not round intermediate calculations. Round your answer to the nearest dollar.

2. Assume that an otherwise identical firm had $6 million in total assets at the end of 2016. The identical firm's capital intensity ratio (A₀*/S₀) is (a)(higher than, lower than, or equal to) than Broussard's; therefore, the identical firm is (b)(less, more, the same) capital intensive - it would require (c)(a smaller, a larger, or the same) increase in total assets to support the increase in sales.

Broussard Skateboard's sales are expected to increase by 15% from $8.4 million in 2016 to $9.66 million in 2017. Its assets totaled $3 million at the end of 2016. Broussard is already at full capacity, so its assets must grow at the same rate as projected sales. At the end of 2016, current liabilities were $1.4 million, consisting of $450,000 of accounts payable, $500,000 of notes payable, and $450,000 of accruals. The after-tax profit margin is forecasted to be 3%, and the forecasted payout ratio is 75%. Use the AFN equation to forecast Broussard's additional funds needed for the coming year. Round your answer to the nearest dollar. Do not round intermediate calculations.

Please answer the following problems:

1. SunLife insurance has been trying to penetrate the mass market and educate them on the benefits and importance of life aand other investment insurance. They have used several TV personalities like Charo Santos and Piolo Pascual to penetrarte the segment, with limited success. People are aware of the brand, but are still not taking insurance due to various issues like affordability and distribution. Use the Ansoff Matrix and recommend how they can expand their market with an incremental 5 million heads by penetrating a new customer segment.

2. The milk tea craze is back for the third time around. Even fastfood chains and coffee shops offer milk tea. Taiwan has always been associated with milk tea, so you realized you have a great idea: to launch the Filipino milk tea. Using segmentation strategies, what segment of the market can you go after using that idea, and what will be your marketing mix?

3. WWF has been advocating sustainable development, from protection of wildlife to conservation efforts of our natural resources. While corporate support has been high, individual donors have plunged. People are not aware of where to donate , if at all, they will donate to an advocacy. Using the AIDA communication model, what can you propose to WWF to get 10,000 people to donate 1,000 pesos to the organization.

4. In today’s digital age, what is the fastest way to earn P100,000? Defend your product (or service). Identify your target market and positioning , and how you can mathematically earn (profit, not sales) P100,000. How and where will you market?

Assume that a customer shops at a local grocery store spending an average of ​$400 a​ week, resulting in a retailer profit of ​$40 each week from this customer. Assuming the shopper visits the store all 52 weeks of the​ year, calculate the customer lifetime value if this shopper remains loyal over a​ 10-year life span. Also assume a 3 percent annual interest rate and no initial cost to acquire the customer. The customer yields ​$ nothing per year in profits for this retailer. ​(Round to the nearest​ dollar.)