FIN 370 Project Guidelines (TESLA MOTORS)
the firm “TESLA MOTOR” a member of the S&P 500 Index. (You can get a list of current members here: http://data.okfn.org/data/core/s‐and‐p‐500‐companies).

Note, when discussing any detail, you will cite on what page of the electronic version of the electronic document (sent to me in pdf form) that you found the
information.

Also, Excel must be used to do all calculations. Next, get the most recent financial statements for your firm. The statements should include data for three years. The
income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows should be included with your report. The sections of your project should be as follows:

1. What is your motivation or interest in selecting this firm?

2. Review the management discussion and analysis (MD&A) section. Highlight a couple of strengths, weaknesses, risks, or opportunities that the discussion
emphasizes or that you find interesting. Note that you will be marked on whether your items are, in fact, relevant to an analysis of the firm’s “profitability,
financial stability, or future prospects,” as per the syllabus.

3. Create vertical and horizontal common-size financial statements for the income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet (obviously, for all years
included). Note that some entries may not be present in all years. For the horizontal statements, use the earliest year as the base year. Comment on any obvious
developments across the years, if any. {Note: For this part of the exercise, please use the information provided in the firm’s actual financial statements rather than
the standardized numbers as prepared by Capital IQ, Bloomberg, or some other data provider.}

4. Select any two families of financial ratios from the following categories: solvency, liquidity, profitability, activity, and credit. As in part 2. You will be
marked here on whether you relate your analysis to the firm’s “profitability, financial stability, or future prospects,” as per the syllabus. (a) Calculate for all
years and put in a table those ratios that the textbook lists for the family. (b) Comment on and interpret any important or interesting changes across the years.

5. Go online to Bloomberg or Capital IQ. For any one financial ratio from part 4, above, find how the data provider has either adjusted the number in question, or
else in your opinion overlooked an important adjustment.

6. Examine the footnotes and identify two that you find particularly interesting. What details do you learn that you find interesting or that inform your opinion
of the firm? Please copy / paste these two footnotes into your report as an appendix. As in parts 2 and 4, you will be marked on whether your selected footnotes are
relevant towards an analysis of the firm’s “profitability, financial stability, or future prospects,” as per the syllabus.

7. Link the quantitative to the qualitative: more specifically, explain your trend-analysis results from part 4, above, in the context either of the MD&A from
part 1 or in the context of some external piece of information about the firm, such as a news item or magazine article.