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Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.

The aim of this study is to use a financial approach based on the Du Pont expansion to investigate the impact of demographics, specialization, tenure, vertical integration, farm type, and regional location on the three levers of performance (ROE) – namely, net profit margins, asset turnover ratio, and asset‐to‐equity ratio.

This research uses a system of equations in conjunction with 1996‐2009 farm‐level data from the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) to evaluate the factors driving farm‐level profitability, namely, net profit margins, asset turnover ratio, and asset‐to‐equity ratio. The methodology employed in this study corrects heterogeneity and uses repeated cross‐section estimation procedure to estimate the empirical models.

The study finds that key drivers of net profit margins are operator education, farm size and typology, specialization, and level of government payments. Key factors affecting the asset turnover ratio component of the Du Pont model include asset turnover ratio is driven by operator age, contracting, specialization, and receiving government payments. Finally, key factors affecting asset‐to‐equity ratio component of the Du Pont model are farm size, farm typology, contracting, and specialization drive asset‐to‐equity ratio.

Existing research does not examine the factors affecting returns to equity in faring at the farm‐level. Specifically, a micro‐level analysis of American farm's future structure and financial performance that accounts for the spatial and inter‐temporal dimensions of profitability has never been conducted.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between regulatory changes, returns on equity and stock market valuations for Canadian food and non‐food agribusinesses.

Two empirical approaches are employed. First, an event study is used to evaluate the impact of official regulatory announcements on the stock market valuations of selected Canadian agribusinesses. Next, an approach introduced by Mishra et al. using the Du Pont expansion is applied to investigate the effect of regulations on firms' accounting profits. Data on Canadian food and non‐food agribusinesses are collected from Bloomberg, Thompson One Banker and SEDAR.

The event study demonstrates that official regulatory announcement dates do not correspond with abnormal stock market returns for Canadian firms, while the Du Pont model yields mixed evidence with respect to their accounting profits.

This paper only considers publicly traded companies. As a result, survivorship bias may exist. Future research should include privately held and cooperative firms.

Food regulations can influence firm profits and shareholder wealth, so understanding how government actions influence agribusiness is important when considering the total costs of current and future food policy.

The interaction between policy and the financial performance of Canada's publicly traded agribusinesses is an under‐researched area and no studies have examined Canadian data. The results of this study are valuable to both policy makers and researchers.

Agribusinesses represent a fundamental link in connecting farmers with retailers and consumers, yet little research has been done to examine the historical financial performance of these food processing firms. This paper aims to address this issue.

The authors' research examines how publicly‐traded agribusinesses perform financially compared to all firms over the period from 1961 to 2011. The authors utilize several indicators of company success, including financial ratios and balance sheet/income statement items, to compare agribusiness firms to all firms in the market. The authors perform the analysis over time and also for companies with low, median, and high performance. They also perform Du Pont analysis to compare return on equity components between agribusinesses and all firms.

The authors find that agribusinesses outperform at the median the sample of all firms in terms of financial ratios related to profitability, liquidity, and market ratios, but have slightly lower liquidity and debt ratios. The Du Pont analysis shows that the higher return on equity for agribusinesses is mostly due to higher asset turnover ratios, indicating higher operating efficiency of agribusinesses. The strong financial performance of food manufacturing agribusinesses makes them valuable companies in an investment portfolio.

This study provides a basic overview of financial ratios used to examine the financial performance of publicly‐traded agribusinesses. The authors' findings show that agribusinesses outperform all firms in terms of key financial indicators.

Bicycle industry, emerging markets, competitor analysis, financial forecasting.

This case can be used as a teaching tool in the following courses: MBA/post-graduate programs in management in management accounting, management control systems and strategic cost management; executive training programs for middle and senior level employees; and under-graduate/post-graduate programs in entrepreneurship. It can be used to explain and test the concepts of SWOT analysis, Porter's five forces model and PEST analysis. It introduces the technique of breakeven analysis and its relationship with operating leverage. Moreover, it demonstrates the application and analyses of the Du Pont equation.

Hero Cycles Ltd was established by the four Munjal brothers in pre-independence India. It started off as a business of bicycle spare parts, but quickly expanded in post-independence India, with Ludhiana as its base. The company later joined with foreign firms like Honda Motors, Japan to become the largest manufacturers of bicycles in the world. It dominates domestic markets with a market share of around 40 percent. Ananth Munjal, a learned, ambitious and cautious individual, is the next generation, ready to take over the reins of the company. Being someone who believes in learning from past mistakes, he forms a team to critically examine the decisions made by his predecessors. This team is also directed to utilize forecasting techniques for determining the expected profitability given the existing state of affairs that prevail. Additionally, Du Pont analysis is to be performed for studying the efficiency of the company on the facets of operating performance, asset turnover and associated financial leverage. Also, Ananth's risk-averse nature compels him to study the past with regard to the relationship between operating leverage, breakeven sales and corresponding margin of safety. Furthermore, he wishes to inspect the historical cost structure of the firm, and its influence on company performance.

These include the use of: SWOT analysis to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to a company; PEST analysis to identify the political, economic, social and technological factors that affect the operations of a company; Porter's five forces model to analyse an industry. The case also helps students: by identifying fixed costs and variable costs that are a part of operating expenditure of a business; in the use of forecasting the financials of a company for the sake of predicting the future outcomes of certain business strategies; by application of Du Pont analysis to examine the efficiency of the various processes and strategies; in determining quantitative terms like contribution margin, breakeven sales, operating leverage, margin of safety, their significance, and the relationship between these terms.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M & A) on corporate performance. It addresses the major question related to the long-term performance of the acquiring firm.

The paper uses the long-term pre- and post-merger financial data to investigate the long-term performance. It compares performance of the acquiring firms before and after M & A. The present work conducts a comprehensive ratio analysis of 14 major ratios related to profitability, efficiency, leverage and liquidity. To ascertain the sources of the better long-term post-M & A returns, the present work decomposes the measure of operating performance into its constituents in terms of Du Pont analysis.

Taking a sample of 305 M & As during the period of January 2003 to December 2008, it has been observed that there is significant improvement in the profitability of the acquiring companies involved in M & A. The results pertaining to profitability, efficiency (in terms of utilization of fixed assets), expense and liquidity ratios show that there is an improvement in performance of the acquiring firms in the post-M & A period. The analysis in terms of Du Pont shows improvement in the long-term operating profit margin of the acquiring firms. This means higher profit is generated per unit net sales by the acquiring firms after the M & A. The higher profits (profit before interest and taxes and non-operating income) are generated primarily due to the better operating margins. The improved operating cash flows are on account of the improvement in the post-M & A operating margins of the acquirers, not due to the efficient utilization of the assets turnover to generate higher sales.

The paper contributes to the existing literature by comparing operating performance and profitability of acquirers before and after M & A using a comprehensive set of 14 ratios for a substantially large sample.

Along with organisations in other fields, retailers have been using computers in management systems since the mid‐1960s and, in some cases, much earlier. Over this period, there have been dramatic changes in the computer technology available for use by management, together with considerable accumulated experience in using them, particularly in retailing. However, this has, in many industries, been offset by an increase in the problems facing managers; in retailing, for instance, companies now have to face economies in which disposable incomes have been squeezed, whilst buying patterns are changing rapidly and becoming difficult to predict. A consequence of this is that to survive today retailers must be far better at product range planning, cash planning and control of capital than they needed to be in the 1960s. They may be helped in this by an increasing understanding of how to manage product range, cash flow or funds allocation problems, and also by the availability of more advanced computing facilities which allow managers to apply this understanding more effectively. These facilities vary from the range of computers on offer (mainframe to micros) to data flow networks, automated data input, visual display terminals and specialist soft‐ware for retail planning and control (e.g. distribution packages).

After completion of the case, students will be able to understand the following: how to understand financial statements, income statements and cash-flow statements with the help of ratios; understand the concept of shareholding pattern along with different entities, namely, non-promoters, foreign institutional investor, domestic institutional investor and others; financial ratio analysis with traditional DuPont and extended DuPont analysis; understand the differences between comparable firms; how to analysis return, risk, covariance, correlation, market risk and capital assets pricing model (CAPM) and how to suggest an appropriate investment strategy.

The case presents company background and financial statements of four companies listed under departmental stores in India, namely, Vmart retail, V2 retail, Avenue Supermarts (known as DMart) and future retail. Students are asked to determine, which company is performing better to make a recommendation for investment. Students learn the tools of financial ratio i.e. profitability, efficiency, liquidity and market-based ratio along with the traditional DuPont decomposition and the extended DuPont analysis. Students also learn how to measure stock return, standard deviation, covariance, correlation, market risk and CAPM.

This case is suitable for management accounting, financial analysis and security analysis and portfolio management courses at the post-graduate or graduate levels. The case can be used in similar courses such as in financial statement analysis courses or security analysis and portfolio management courses.

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CSS: 1 Accounting and finance.

Profiles shareholder value and how it began with Du Pont, back in the 1920s, a US firm held up as an ideal of advanced management practice, who started measuring investment returns (referred to then as returns on investment or ROI), which was initially called the ‘Du Pont formula’. Elaborates, in detail, all of the relevant information regarding the formative years of this system. Concludes that the subject of shareholder value, through its rapidly‐increased use in the ‘Financial Times’ (a figure accentuates this), has reached a new level — from hardly mentioned ten years ago to currently more than once per day on average.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the Du Pont method by connecting productivity and profitability through financial statements focusing on the two most common productivity indicators for companies: total factor productivity (TFP) and labour productivity.

The first part of the paper uses a deductive approach to obtain a new productivity rate of return. The second part applies the methodology of financial statements analysis to develop an empirical application of the findings.

The main finding is a functional relationship among the return on operating assets (ROOA), TFP and labour productivity. From it, the paper obtains a productivity rate of return that synthesizes both productivity measures. The ROOA is broken down into the sum of three parts: productivity, price change, and a crossed effect between turnover and price change.

The model developed in this paper enables analysts and managers to deepen in the causes of margin and turnover and, thus, in the causes of ROOA. To the extent that the separation between productivity and price change effects adds clarity to the knowledge of the causes of ROOA, it creates, at the same time a basis for making more precise decisions in order to improve corporate performance.

This paper differs from other studies by presenting the return of operating assets as a variable that depends on productivity ratios. Financial statement analysis has only occasionally incorporated productivity measures among the variables regarded as the drivers of a companys economic performance.