Proterra was founded by Dale Hill in 2004 with a vision to design and manufacture world-leading, advanced technology heavy-duty vehicles powered solely by clean domestic fuels. After launching a first successful fleet of alternative fuel buses in the 1990s, Proterra focused on developing the 'bus of tomorrow.' Proterra Inc. also designs and manufactures heavy-duty vehicles including EcoRide, a battery electric and zero-emissions bus, and Proterra Catalyst, an electric transit vehicle. The company manufactures a TerraFlex Energy System that enables customers to select amount and type of energy storage to meet specific route requirements, plus TerraVolt fast-charge batteries, TerraVolt extended range batteries, an on-route charge station and in-depot charging services. It offers financing solutions, route simulation analysis, battery lifecycle management, and standard warranty services (Proterra, 2015). It serves customers throughout the United States. The company is privately owned, but is in the process of becoming a public corporation. With this expectation, the firm's chief executive officer (CEO) has asked for determination of which of two companies appears to be a better peer to compare itself against, New Flyer Industries, Inc. (a Toronto-based firm), or Tesla. Tesla Motor Vehicles designs, develops, manufactures, and sells high-performance fully electric vehicles and stationary energy storage units similar to certain Proterra products. Tesla Motors has subsidiaries in North America, Europe and Asia, with the primary purpose of these subsidiaries being to market, manufacture, sell and/or service their vehicles (Tesla Motors, 2016). New Flyer was founded in 1930, and is now the largest transit bus and motorcoach manufacturer and parts distributor in North America with fabrication, manufacturing, distribution and service centers in Canada and the United States. It is North America's heavy-duty transit bus leader and offers clean diesel, natural gas, diesel-electric hybrid, electric-trolley and battery-electric. Information regarding Tesla and New Flyer is given here, for your use in comparing these firms.

Tesla Versus New Flyer

Significance

Measure

TSLA

NFI

Total Market Value of all outstanding shares.

Market capitalization

33.63B

1.831B

Number of outstanding shares currently held by all shareholders.

Outstanding shares of stock

147.28M

59.742M

A Beta coefficient indicates the systemic risk that an asset has relative to an average asset. A risk-free asset has a Beta of zero.

Beta

1.28

0.16

The return the firm must earn on its existing assets to maintain the value of its stock, and the required return on any investments by the firm that have essentially the same risks as existing operations.

WACC

9.03%

8.34

PE ratio divided by expected future earnings growth (after multiplying the growth rate by 100).

PEG Ratio

18.47

0.5

A measure of profit per dollar of assets.

ROA

-7.04%

6.26%

A measure of how the stockholders fared during the year.

ROE

-113.20%

13.21%

A measure of how much investors are willing to pay per dollar of current earnings. Higher PEs are often taken to mean the firm has significant prospects for future growth.

P/E Ratio

-29.17

25.3

Ratio of Net income to sales.

Profit Margin

-23.91%

-3.83%

References

Bloomberg. United States rates and bonds.

Federal Reserve. (2016). Federal Reserve economic data.

Korosec, K. (2015). This startup is gearing up to be the Tesla of electric buses. Fortune Magazine.

Proterra. (2015). About Proterra.

Securities and Exchange Commission. (n.d.) SEC.gov home.

Tesla Motors. (2016). Tesla Motors, Inc. 2016 annual report.

Yahoo. (n.d.) Yahoo finance.

Assume that you are the finance manager for Proterra and you have been asked to provide an analysis of the following issues, as the firm develops benchmarks for its cost of capital (WACC) estimates. The firm's CEO has instructed you to use the pure play approach to estimate its WACC cost of capital, and has chosen Tesla Motors (ticker symbol TSLA) and New Flyer (ticker symbol NYI.TO) as possible representative peers (Korosec, 2015).

QUESTION: Analyze the relative applicability or inapplicability of utilizing these firms as peers to evaluate Proterra's likely cost of capital, with the given above data about Proterra, Tesla and New Flyer, and the lessons of Capital Market History.

Mr Rabbit, Mr Bear and Mr Fox go to town. A new bakery has just opened, and in an attempt to attract awareness, it is offering free unlimited samples of its chocolate chip cookies. However, the free cookies can only be consumed in-store (you cannot take them home).

Mr. Rabbit ate 10 cookies and then stopped

Mr. Bear ate 25 cookies before he stopped, then bought a milkshake.

Mr. Fox had 30 cookies and then stopped.

The owner of the bakery, Mr. Turtle, said “I am glad you like the cookies!” Here’s is a funny story about my muffins...last week, I dropped the price on muffins 20% but I only sold 20% more! In the end, the total muffin sales were the same as if they were normally priced!!

Briefly explain your answer to the questions below:

1. Who got to zero marginal utility for the cookies first?
2. Mr Bear still was not full after 25 cookies, since he paid for a milkshake. Why would he pay for a milkshake when he could keep eating cookies for free?
3. What kind of price elasticity is Mr Turtle seeing on his muffins?

Please discuss the following questions:

1- How do you handle change or simply learning how to use something new such as a new computer?

2- Discuss an organizational change that you went through, such as a new job, new manager, new school, etc. and describe how the organization handled and communicated the change. Do you feel they did an effective job? If you feel they did a poor job, how could they have done it better?

Using one of the schools of thought we’ve discussed in class (Keynesian/ New Keynesians, Monetarism, New Classical, RBCT, ABCT) discuss the merits of rule-based vs. discretionary fiscal and monetary policy with regard to stabilizing the macroeconomy. Be sure to include the assumptions made by the school of thought you use in your answer.

Study A) Using pediatricians’ records, randomly select 200 children with DM and 800 children without DM; interview their mothers concerning infant feeding history. Compare the infant feeding history among children with and without DM.

Study B) Review pediatricians’ records for a random sample of 1,000 youth age 12-19 years old and record DM status and infant feeding history for each youth.

Study C) Send letters and make follow-up telephone calls to the mothers of 1,000 12-year old boys and girls who have tested negative for diabetes within the past six months. Request the parents’ consent to review their child’s medical records annually until the child reaches age 20. Obtain information on infant feeding status from the medical record and a parental questionnaire.

Study D) Send letters and make follow-up telephone calls to 1,000 mothers of newborn babies asking the mothers to participate in a study in which the investigators will randomly assign mothers to breastfeed or formula feed and will review the annual pediatric visit records for the child through age 20 years.

Study E) Examine the correlation between per capita formula sales and DM prevalence across the 20 towns in Maramba.

Which one of the observational (i.e., non-experimental) studies would provide data to estimate the incidence of diabetes in breastfed children?

Study A)

Study B)

Study C)

Study D)

Study E)

Which of Hill's guidelines is satisfied in Study C, assuming the exposure data are accurate?

A) Biological Plausibility

B) Consistency

C) Temporality

D) Strength of Association

The Clark Sports Camp operates three sports programs: basketball, lacrosse and field hockey. The camp provides a unique opportunity for boys and girls to engage in intensive summer sports activities. Parents often bring their all of children for the six week session. Due to diminishing profits in the basketball program, they are considering eliminating the basketball program. Camp owner Mikey Matheny has asked you to review the income statement, determine the impact on profit from dropping the basketball program and make a recommendation.

An admitted call girl once said that prostitution is a profitable business if you market it correctly and properly screen your clients. The U.S. Department of Commerce claims that the underground economy (especially illegal gambling and prostitution) represents between 3 and 40 percent beyond the legal economy. Fifi defends the right to sell sex between consenting adults and argues that a person has the right to use his or her body in any way that maximizes income. “We allow people to box professionally. So why do we allow people to beat the heck out of each other for a living, but prohibit people from being nice to each other (via sexual acts)?” From the perspective of prostitutes, such as Fifi, “It’s not the government’s business. Should sex between consenting adults be a concern of the government at all? We allow prostitution in Nevada and in many other countries, so we’re inconsistent as well. You mean to tell me that all those places are immoral? We do the same thing that a legal massage parlor does, only we do it on different parts of the body.” However, many former prostitutes say that most were drug addicts and many were molested as children or as young girls or boys. “When I first did it, I felt a tremendous sense of power,” said Bula, “but that feeling quickly faded. Feelings of powerlessness, shame, and drug addiction ultimately followed, knowing that my prostitution was a continuing form of abuse, even though I made good money.”

• Evaluate the moral permissibility of Fifi’s decision to be a prostitute.

• Evaluate the moral permissibility of Bula’s decision to be a prostitute

3. Listed below are the amounts of strontium – 90 (in millibecquerels or mBq per gram of calcium) in a simple
random sample of baby teeth obtained from Pennsylvania residents and New York residents born after 1979
(based on data from “An unexpected rise of strontium – 90 in US Deciduous Teeth in the 1990s,” by Mangrano,
et. al., Science of Total Environment). (Use 3 decimal places)
Pennsylvania: 155 142 149 130 151 163 151 142 156 133 138 161
New York: 133 140 142 131 134 129 128 140 140 140 137 143
A. Use 0.05 level of significance to test the claim that the mean amount of strontium – 90 from Pennsylvania
residents is greater than the mean amount from New York residents. (Perform the steps in hypothesis testing.
Make sure that the 5 steps are clearly shown in your work) (10 pts)
A. Hypotheses:

B. Test Statistic

C. Critical Value

P – value: _______________

D. Decision Rule

E. Conclusion

A town council wants to estimate the proportion of residents who are in favor of a proposal to upgrade the computers in the town library. A random sample of 100 residents was selected, and 97 of those selected indicated that they were in favor of the proposal. Is it appropriate to assume that the sampling distribution of the sample proportion is approximately normal?

3,500 women between the ages 60 -74 years are in a town consisting of a population of 15,000 persons. 85 cases of cancer are in the town one year and 30 of these cases were women 60 -74 years old. What is the prevalence of cancer among women of this age group?