o Calculate and PRESENT Growth Rates for the past 3 FULL Years (2019-2021, if 2021 is not available yet use 2018-2020)
o Eye Test
Look at Income Statement and Balance Sheet and identify 5 changes that stand out and offer a possible explanation based on your analyses
Do not include changes that you plan to attribute to Covid-19 (challenging for sure, but we want to look beyond answering everything with one reason – dig deeper and find relevant issues that are not covid related. Remember, we did this in the Bumble case.)
o Review Management’s Discussion & Analysis
Perform a review (bullet points) of key details
o Review Risk Factors
Perform a review (bullet points) of key details
o Include links to the Annual Report at the bottom of the slide for easy access (if you downloaded, then upload to a Google Drive folder and provide links)
o Include links to your spreadsheet where you have performed calculations
• Recommendations
Provide 2 key strategic recommendations – do not take this section lightly or as a quick throwaway.
Every answer cannot be a partnership
ONE of your recommendations MUST be an acquisition (M&A) – the acquisition should be feasible (Example: a $2bn company cannot buy Apple)
o Tools:
Chapter 6 should offer great inspiration on how to make a plan of action with strategy to win a market
The “How to Grow” Model (Directions & Modes of Growth) should also provide some inspiration on which direction a company may pursue.
o Each recommendation should allude to the gap (capitalizing on an unrealized opportunity is a gap by the way) you’ve uncovered in your analyses above
o Clarify which opportunity or risk your team’s recommendations will help overcome backed by:
Reasons – elaborate why you hypothesize this will work (i.e. “This idea has been tried by XYZ companies and demonstrated success in 90% of cases). Everything in this deck – esp. recommendations should have evidence to back them.
Potential costs (estimate and provide a basis for the estimate (i.e. maybe a competitor spent $X to do the same thing, or you have an article discussing the general cost)
Feasibility – Do not pick ideas that are not feasible or impossible (i.e. “Tesla should create world peace so that everyone lives happily ever after and then based on their happiness they will all buy Teslas OR Tesla should buy all Fuel Cell technology in the world and destroy it so EV is the only option.”)