Proposal of analyzing Hershey's stock price and this firm Essay

Proposal of analyzing Hershey's stock price and this firm - Essay Example Using the results of the following report, my recommendation will be to invest into the Hershey stocks, as the company’s performance in the industry is commendable as well as its stock’s performance. After thoroughly analyzing the stocks of Hershey Company, I would note that the company has a potential for a continued appreciation for the value of its stock price in the stock market. However, my analyst recommendation in overall would be a buy of the shares and not a strong purchse for the stocks of the company. The reason for this is due to the rapid increase in the company’s share price and a relatively high P/E ratio. My recommendations based on my review of the company’s financial indicators, its opportunities for future growth and its comparison to the main competitors in the field (Fridson, Martin and Fernando 75). A detailed analysis that led to the drawing of my conclusion is as discussed in the report below. Brief description of Hershey Company Th e Hershey Chocolate Company is a US-based firm that is incorporated according to the laws of the State of Delaware. However, the company was founded in 1894 by Milton S. Hershey. Since that time, the company has remained as the leading manufacturer of chocolates and other sugary confectionaries, and has a marketing base of about 42.5% in North America. The company has several wholly-owned subsidiaries and entities to which it has a major controlling interest. This company is also the major and largest producer of superiority chocolate in North America and leads globally in chocolate and sugar confectionery production. The company functions as a single reportable segment in the manufacture, marketing, sale and distribution of the products under various brand names. The company is founded on the basis and principles of returning back to the community in which it operates in through corporate social responsibility (Brigham, Eugene and Michael 120). The amount of revenue that the compan y generates equals nearly to $6billion annually and has a current employment base of about 14,000 employees across all its subsidiaries. Over the years, the company has portrayed consistency in its growth patterns both in terms of market share and the market holdings. It has accumulated a large amount of wealth which have seen it trade perfectly in the stock market. Through this, the company has been able to earn itself a positive image and reputation both nationally and internationally following the various innovation programmes it has invested into. One such innovation programme is that of the ‘Innovative Cocoa – Link Mobile Technology Programme’ that was so far expanded to Cote d’Ivoire in May 2013. However, the company’s growth is expected to continue as a result of the announcement that it will price $250million, 2.625% notes by the year 2023. Recent developments in Hershey In the recent past, Hershey Co. has had several developments that have been witnessed through acquisitions of other small firms thus, turning them into its subsidiaries. For instance, in the year 1996, Hershey purchased the operations of America in Leaf Candy Company. In 1999, the company diversified and divested its Pasta group into several equity partners in a bid to form the New World Pasta Co. currently known as Ebro Foods. In 2002, the public became aware of the intention of Hershey Trust Foundation that was seeking to sell its

Use of Financial Ratios Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Use of Financial Ratios - Essay Example The paper is an attempt to analyze the accuracy of the statement of Lev and Sunder using some evidences taken from real world, especially by doing the cross sectional analysis of financial ratios. Use of Financial Ratios Financial ratios are used to measure a company’s financial condition or to analyze between two companies’ financial condition. All the stakeholders of the company have interest in company’s future, that is how the company would perform in the short term or long term future, how much it is secure to invest in the company, what type of change should be introduce so that the company can perform better. When an investor wants to take the decision to invest money, certainly he wants to invest it in the most effective company, the decision he can take by using the financial ratio analysis along with other type of analysis like qualitative analysis or other type of quantitative analysis. Critical Analysis Ratio analysis is a very widely used tool for analyze the financial stability of a firm. But there are certain problems arise when the analyst don’t take the associated factors in consideration. When the analyst is doing the performance analysis of two companies, they should remind that two companies can follow two different accounting policies. There is no single accounting standard which is being followed by the companies all over the world. (Fischer, Taylor and Cheng, 2008, p.505). The taxation rules of different states, different countries vary over the world. The inflation over the world is different. A multinational company has to face different taxation policy, different inflation over the world. So when a researcher is analyzing the performance of a company using ratio analysis, he should take these factors in account. There are also technical factors associated with the analysis. Many statistical tools which are being used in ratio analysis are based on the assumption that the data are normally distributed, but in reality that doesn’t happened. For identifying the financial indicators specifically for Critically Access Hospitals the Flex Monitoring Team used 114 financial ratios as their part of research. But they found many problems when research about the industry, like Hospitals with negative current Assets or negative current liabilities was excluded from the calculation of median, but that should be i ncluded when researching about the liquidity of the industry (Flex Monitoring Team, 2005, p.17-18). A research study was performed by taking 66 listed Malaysian firms’ data for the period 1980 to 1996. The forms were taken from 3 sectors industrial sector, mixed industry and combination of industrial and property sector. From the research it has been seen that only current asset percent was conformed to normal distribution. For doing the ratio analysis effectively three type of transformation techniques were used namely square, square root and natural log. When the square and square root property were used they were found as not effective, because the variables of the ratio analysis are not normally distributed. But natural log technique is proved effective by the researcher as the process considers that the data available is not normal. The researcher proved through the research that when a ratio analysis is being performed to analyze the performance of a company or comparab le analysis between two companies is done then they should address the proportionality effect on the ratio’s normality (Sori et al., 2006, p.71-81). From a survey done on U.S.A. firms it is clear a ratio can