Each day, the warehouse manager inspects the warehouse to make sure housekeeping protocols are followed, ensuring all the boxes are neatly stacked and there is no debris in the aisles. a) inspection or b) no inspection

Daniel owns 100 shares of abc corporation's common stock. abc uses the fair value option, and recent declines in the firm's credit rating have caused the value of the firm's outstanding bonds payable to drop by 10%. daniel feels this is good news, but he wants to know what you think about the situation. which of the following represents your best response? a : "this situation may be positive for you in that the change in abc's credit standing indicates that the value of the firm's assets is likely increasing. however, the drop in bond value may negate any positive effects on your bottom line, because it means your claim on the firm's assets is simultaneously decreasing." b : "actually, this is bad news all around. the drop in the value of abc's bonds payable means shareholders' claims on the firm's assets have decreased. moreover, abc's declining credit rating means that the firm's assets are probably also dropping in value, thus magnifying your losses even more." c : "on the surface, this seems like good news because it means your claim on the firm's assets has increased. however, the drop in creditworthiness may also indicate that abc's assets are declining in value, thus offsetting any gains associated with the drop in bonds payable." d : "you're right! this is good news because it means that abc's debtholders have a decreased claim on the firm's assets. as a result, the firm's existing shareholders"like you"have seen their claim on the firm's assets increase."

Brandt enterprises is considering a new project that has a cost of $1,000,000, and the cfo set up the following simple decision tree to show its three most likely scenarios. the firm could arrange with its work force and suppliers to cease operations at the end of year 1 should it choose to do so, but to obtain this abandonment option, it would have to make a payment to those parties. how much is the option to abandon worth to the firm?

Sabrina gupta, an investment advisor with a major brokerage firm, was examining wal-mart stores, inc. (wal-mart) stock and its valuation. gupta wondered whether to recommend the stock to any of her new clients or to existing clients who did not currently have wal-mart in their portfolios.her key task was to use an intrinsic value approach to price the shares and to then compare the resulting price with the price at which the stock was traded in the market. gupta wanted to use alternative valuation methods and assumptions to produce intrinsic value estimates for wal-mart stock.she was interested in seeing if the alternative methods would point to a consensus regarding the valuation of the stock and to see if the valuations suggested an investment opportunity given the current market price. methods she contemplated to use were: multi-stage growth modelprice earnings multiplemost valuation methods gupta considered required a common set of inputs: future cash flows to wal-mart investorsgrowth rate of future cash flowsdiscount factor or required rate of return by wal-mart investorsgupta gathered data to determine each of the above.gupta thought that dividends to wal-mart shareholders would adequately capture the cash flows to wal-mart shareholders; she also thought that this approach would simplify her task and she would revisit more complex valuation models if she felt the need.gupta thought that capm would provide her a relatively reliable estimate of the required rate of return. capm based required rate of return can be estimated by using a risk free rate, systematic risk of the firm and equity market risk premium. gupta thought that in a valuation exercise that involve long term cash flows, 10-year government bond yield would be an appropriate risk free rate of return estimate. she checked the 10 year note rate and found out that it was about 3.68%. gupta searched for wal-mart beta in bloomberg. bloomberg estimates betas by regressing the s& p 500 returns on the firm returns over the past two years and arrives at a “raw” beta estimate. bloomberg makes an adjustment in raw beta based on some academic research. gupta is confident that bloomberg adjustment is justified and she uses wal-mart beta estimate of 0.66 in her analysis.while gupta is aware of the importance of emrp assumption, she thinks that bloomberg’s historical estimate of 5.05% is a safe assumption. she is aware of the fact that some studies suggest a larger risk premium of approximately six per cent, while others suggest a much lower forward-looking premium of less than four per cent. she is mindful of the arbitrariness of her assumption, and she takes a note to revisit this issue if her valuations produce unreasonable estimates.anticipated dividend growth (g) is often estimated in a variety of ways.first, observed historical dividend growth can be assumed to continue in a perpetual fashion.second, future dividend growth can be estimated on the basis of recent estimates of analysts.gupta noted that the consensus annual wal-mart dividend for fiscal year 2011 was $1.21, and one respected analyst had estimated the expected constant dividend growth (in perpetuity) at approximately 3%.as the chart suggests, both earnings and dividend growth rates are declining but they seem to be higher than the “respected analyst’s” estimates. gupta decides to use several alternative perpetual growth assumptions to see the impact on price. since gupta decided to use variants of dividend discount model (ddm), she checked the anticipated earnings for 2011. analyst’s estimates suggested $4.10 earnings per share. gupta decided to use 10% growth rate from 2011 to 2012 and assumed a steady decline to 3% in 13 years (until 2024) where the perpetual growth rate of 3% resumes. she also assumed that walmart will increase its dividend payout ratio from 30% to 55% from years 2012 to 2024. you are asked to reproduce gupta’s analysis of multi-stage growth model and double check her valuation by using an earnings multiple. you have all the data you need to conduct the multi stage discounted growth model analysis, but you will need to do some research about the multiples valuation.