Throughout this course, you have been researching and analyzing various financial statements for Deere & Company. For this Final Paper, you will culminate your analysis with an in-depth comparison of Deere & Company and Caterpillar Inc. In your project, you will complete the following items based on the files you downloaded above:
•             Examine the four primary financial statements for each firm and address the following:
o             Statement of Cash Flows:
             Compare the statement of cash flows for the two firms, noting the major inflows and outflows of cash.
o             Income Statement:
             Compare the income statements for the two firms, noting the issues each one faces regarding sales projections.
o             Balance Sheet:
             Compare the balance sheets for the two firms, noting any issues each firm may want to address regarding liability, and how each firm might be impacted by increasing interest rates.
o             Shareholder Equity:
             Calculate the shareholder equity for each firm.
o             Calculate the following ratios and trend analyses on each company:
             ROI analysis
             Ratio analysis, to include the following ratios:
             Profit Margin
             Return on Assets
             Return on equity
             Receivable Turnover
             Average Collection period
             Inventory turnover
             Current ratio
             Working Capital
             Debt to total assets
             Debt to equity
             Earnings per share
             Price to Earnings ratio
             Horizontal, vertical, and trend analysis of financial statements
o             Compare and contrast the two firms in the context of the global economy, noting which types of cultural differences might impact each firm as it does business in other countries.
             Include examples to illustrate your point.
o             Compare and contrast each firm’s global strategic plan based on the information in the annual report from two years ago.
o             Propose which company would be better to invest in, based on the above comparisons. Your proposal should include the key metrics you used to make your decision.
The Final Project
•             Must be eight to 10 double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’sAPA Style(Links to an external site.)resource.
•             Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
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