1. Restructuring activities: Have the companies restructured operations in the last three years?

a)      Determine the amount of the expense on the income statement?

b)      Are other close competitors also restructuring during this time period?

c)      Find the restructuring liability on the balance sheet, does the liability seem reasonable over time?

d)      Are there significant reversals of prior accruals? This might indicate shifting.

Please use ONLY one Excel file to complete this case study, and use one spreadsheet for each problem.

1. Develop a linear regression model to predict Wal-Mart revenue, using CPI as the only independent variable.
2. Develop a linear regression model to predict Wal-Mart revenue, using Personal Consumption as the only independent variable.
3. Develop a linear regression model to predict Wal-Mart revenue, using Retail Sales Index as the only independent variable.
4. Which of these three models is the best?  Use R-square values, Significance F values, p-values and other appropriate criteria to explain your answer.
5. Generate a scatter plot, residual plot and normal probability plot for the best model in part (d) and comment on what you see.

Identify and remove the five cases corresponding to December revenue.

6. Develop a linear regression model to predict Wal-Mart revenue, using CPI as the only independent variable.
7. Develop a linear regression model to predict Wal-Mart revenue, using Personal Consumption as the only independent variable.
8. Develop a linear regression model to predict Wal-Mart revenue, using Retail Sales Index as the only independent variable.
1. Which of these three models is the best?  Use R-square values and Significance F values to explain your answer.
10. Generate a scatter plot, residual plot and normal probability plot for the best model in part (i) and comment on what you see.
11. Comparing the results of parts (d) and (i), which of these two models is better? Use R-square values, Significance F values, p-values, scatter plot, residual plot and normal probability plot to explain your answer.

Case:

Pandora is the Internet’s most successful subscription radio service. In May 2014, Pandora had 77 million registered users. Pandora accounts for over 9 percent of total U.S. radio listening hours. The music is delivered to users from a cloud server, and is not stored on user devices.

It’s easy to see why Pandora is so popular. Users are able to hear only the music they like. Each user selects a genre of music based on a favorite musician or vocalist, and a computer algorithm puts together a “personal radio station” that plays the music of the selected artist plus closely related music by different artists. The algorithm uses more than 450 factors to classify songs, such as the tempo and number of vocalists. These classifications, in conjunction with other signals from users, help Pandora’s algorithms select the next song to play.

People love Pandora, but the question is whether this popularity can be translated into profits. How can Pandora compete with other online music subscription services and online stations that have been making music available for free, sometimes without advertising? “Free” illegally downloaded music has also been a significant factor, as has been iTunes, charging 99 cents per song with no ad support. At the time of Pandora’s founding (2005), iTunes was already a roaring success.

Pandora’s first model was to give away 10 hours of free music and then ask subscribers to pay $36 per month for a year once they used up their 10 free hours. Result: 100,000 people listened to their 10 hours for free and then refused to pay for the annual service. Facing financial collapse, in November 2005 Pandora introduced an ad-supported option. In 2006, Pandora added a “Buy” button to each song being played and struck deals with Amazon, iTunes, and other online retail sites. Pandora now gets an affiliate fee for directing listeners to sites where users can buy the music. In 2008, Pandora added an iPhone app to allow users to sign up from their smartphones and listen all day if they wanted. Today, 70 percent of Pandora’s advertising revenue comes from mobile.

In late 2009 the company launched Pandora One, a premium service that offered no advertising, higher quality streaming music, a desktop app, and fewer usage limits. The service costs $4.99 per month. A very small percentage of Pandora listeners have opted to pay for music subscriptions, with the vast majority opting for the free service with ads. In fiscal 2013 Pandora’s total revenue was $427.1 million, of which $375.2 million (88 percent) came from advertising.

Pandora has been touted as a leading example of the “freemium” revenue model, in which a business gives away some services for free and relies on a small percentage of customers to pay for premium versions of the same service. If a market is very large, getting just 1 percent of that market to pay could be very lucrative— under certain circumstances. Although freemium is an efficient way of amassing a large group of potential customers, companies, including Pandora, have found that it is challenging to convert people enjoying the free service into customers willing to pay. A freemium model works best when a business incurs very low marginal cost, approaching zero, for each free user of its services, when a business can be supported by the percentage of customers willing to pay, and when there are other revenues like advertising fees that can make up for shortfalls in subscriber revenues.

In Pandora’s case, it appears that revenues will continue to come overwhelmingly from advertising, and management is not worried. For the past few years, management has considered ads as having much more revenue-generating potential than paid subscriptions and is not pushing the ad-free service. By continually refining its algorithms, Pandora is able to increase user listening hours substantially. The more time people spend with Pandora, the more opportunities there are for Pandora to deliver ads and generate ad revenue. The average Pandora user listens to 19 hours of music per month.

Pandora is now intensively mining the data collected about its users for clues about the kinds of ads most likely to engage them. Pandora collects data about listener preferences from direct feedback such as likes and dislikes (indicated by thumbs up or down on the Pandora site) and “skip this song” requests, as well as data about which device people are using to listen to Pandora music, such as mobile phones or desktop computers. Pandora uses these inputs to select songs people will want to stick around for, and listen to. Pandora has honed its algorithms so they can analyze billions more signals from users generated over billions of listening minutes per month.

As impressive as these numbers are, Pandora (along with other streaming subscription services) is still struggling to show a profit. There are infrastructure costs and royalties to pay for content from the music labels. Pandora’s royalty rates are less flexible than those of its competitor Spotify, which signed individual song royalty agreements with each record label. Pandora could be paying even higher rates when its current royalty contracts expire in 2015. About 61 percent of Pandora’s revenue is currently allocated to paying royalties. Advertising can only be leveraged so far, because users who opt for free ad-supported services generally do not tolerate heavy ad loads.

CASE QUESTION:

What e-commerce revenue models are Pandora using? How does Pandora generate money with the revenue models? Explain your answer?

Given the following data (in millions of dollars): gross profit, $900; depreciation expense, $100; preferred stock dividends, $25; cost of goods sold, $400; earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation & amortization, $300; interest expense, $75. Assume a tax rate of 21%. Compute the numerical values of sales revenue, operating expenses, earnings before interest and taxes, and earnings available for the common stockholders.

Tom Johnson Manufacturing intends to increase capacity through the addition of new equipment. Two vendors have presented proposals. The fixed costs for proposal A are​ $50,000, and for proposal​ B, $70,000. The variable cost for A is​ $12.00, and for​ B, $10.00. The revenue generated by each unit is​ $20.00.

​a) If the expected volume is​ 8,500 units, _______(proposal A or proposal B) with a total profit = $______ should be chosen ​(enter your response as a whole​ number).

The accountants hired by the Brookside Racquet Club have determined total fixed cost to be $75,000, total variable cost to be $130,000, and total revenue to be $145,000. Because of this information, in the short run, the Brookside Racquet Club should

Use the following information to solve for ROA. Your answer should be entered as a percent. For example 7.31% should be entered as 7.31. Include two decimals and a negative if appropriate Current Assets are $82, net fixed assets are $159, current liabilities are $144 and long term debt is $48 Revenue is $115, total operating expenses are $97, depreciation expense is $48 Interest expense is $14 and taxes are $23  

DEBIT AND CREDIT ANALYSIS:

Complete the following statements using either “debit” or “Credit”

1. The cash account is increased with a                                                 ___________Debit________
   
2. The common stock account is increased with a                                   ____________Credit________
   
3. The equipment account is increased with a                                            ____________________
   
4. The cash account is decreased with a                                                 ____________________
   
5. The accounts payable account is increased with a                    ___________Credit_________
   
6. The revenue account Delivery Fees is increased with a                               ____________________
   
7. The asset account Accounts Receivable is increased with a                ____________________
   
8. The rent expense account is increased with a                                            ____________________
   
9. The dividends are declared the retained earnings account is               ____________________

A cement manufacturer has supplied the following data:

If the company increases its unit sales volume by 5% without increasing its fixed expenses, what would operating income be closest to

Consider the market for butter in Saudi Arabia. The demand and supply relations are given as follows:

Demand:             QD = 12 - 2P

Supply:                Qs = 3P - 3.

P is the price of butter.

1. Suppose government imposes a price ceiling of SAR1 per unit on butter. Calculate: Excess demand or excess supply of butter                                .
2. Suppose the government imposes a tax of 1 (SAR) per unit of butter on the suppliers. Calculate:
3. Government revenue ____________.