Financial Reporting and the SEC

[CLOs: 1, 2]

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, read Chapter 10: Reporting and Analyzing Liabilities, Chapter 11: Reporting and Analyzing Stockholders’ Equity in your course text. Visit the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) EDGAR | Search tools (Links to an external site.)web page.

In an 8-to 10-page paper double-spaced paper (not including the title and reference pages) research and discuss the SEC’s company filings requirements. In your paper:

• Describe how investors can use the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) EDGAR | Search tools (Links to an external site.)web page to quickly research a company’s financial information filed on Forms 10-K and 10-Q.
• Identify the differences between the Annual Report sent to shareholders and the Annual Report on Form 10-K, which must be filed with the SEC.
• Describe the contents of the Form 10-K SEC filing include the following elements:
  • Management Discussion and Analysis
  • Auditors’ Report
  • Selected Financial Data
• Discuss how the SEC’s requirement for domestic and foreign companies using US GAAP to provide their financial statements in the XBRL format can improve financial reporting?
• Most publicly traded companies are examined by numerous analysts. Locate analysts’ ratings about a company of your choice by visiting a website such as Yahoo Finance (Links to an external site.). Provide a comparison over time and across companies in the same industry by answering the following questions:
  • How many analysts rated the company?
  • What are analysts predicting in terms of earnings and revenues?
  • How do the estimates compare against historical results?
  • How do the growth projections for the company compare with the average projections for the S&P 500?

The Financial Reporting and the SEC paper

• Must be 8-to 10-page paper double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s APA Style (Links to an external site.) resource.
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  • Title of paper
  • Student’s name
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Date submitted
• For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.).
• Must use at least six scholarly, including a minimum of three from the Ashford University Library, sources in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) guide.
• Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See the Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.

Carefully review the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.) for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.