| Prepared by William Lim, University of New Brunswick. Note: To do the following interactive exercise, your university library must subscribe to FP Analyzer. Go to: http://www.fpdata.finpost.com/suite/ and click on “FP Corporate Analyzer”. Then login using the ID and Password for your university library. Alternatively, link to FP Corporate Analyzer from your university library’s home page. You may ask for directions from the reference librarian on how to access FP Corporate Analyzer (an e-reference source) from your university library’s home page. After you login, you will first come across a “search” screen. In the box for “Stock Ticker Symbol”, enter L and then click on “Search”. You will get a corporate profile of Loblaw Companies Limited. The fundamental stats include sections on share price statistics, selected ratios, descriptive info, general info and financial statements. (To make comparisons easier, click on “Printable View” and then click on “Print” in your browser’s menu to get a printout of the corporate profile of Loblaws.) Next, click on search to return to the “search” screen. In the box for “Stock Ticker Symbol”, enter SBY and then click on “Search”. You will get a corporate profile of Sobeys Inc. The fundamental stats include sections on share price statistics, selected ratios, descriptive info, general info and financial statements. You will need information on all of these to answer the following questions. - Compare the price to book and price to sales ratios for the companies.
- Are there any substantial differences in the gross and net profit margins for the companies?
- Compare the profitability ratios of the company as measured by return on equity and return on assets.
- Are there any significant differences in growth rates?
- Are there any significant differences in risk ratios?
- Compare the price performance for the two companies over the last 5 years with the price performance of the Consumer Staples Index and the S&P/TSX Composite.
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2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education