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Use the following information to answer the next five questions: A small business called The Grandmother Calendar Company began selling personalized photo calendar kits. The kits were a hit, and sales soon sharply exceeded
15. Cash Flow What are some actions a small company like The Grandmother Calendar Company can take (besides expansion of capacity) if it finds itself in a situation in which growth in sales outstrips production?
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Corporate Finance (The Mcgraw-hill/Irwin Series in Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate)
- Bannister Company, an electronics firm, buys circuit boards and manually inserts various electronic devices into the printed circuit board. Bannister sells its products to original equipment manufacturers. Profits for the last two years have been less than expected. Mandy Confer, owner of Bannister, was convinced that her firm needed to adopt a revenue growth and cost reduction strategy to increase overall profits. After a careful review of her firms condition, Mandy realized that the main obstacle for increasing revenues and reducing costs was the high defect rate of her products (a 6 percent reject rate). She was certain that revenues would grow if the defect rate was reduced dramatically. Costs would also decline as there would be fewer rejects and less rework. By decreasing the defect rate, customer satisfaction would increase, causing, in turn, an increase in market share. Mandy also felt that the following actions were needed to help ensure the success of the revenue growth and cost reduction strategy: a. Improve the soldering capabilities by sending employees to an outside course. b. Redesign the insertion process to eliminate some of the common mistakes. c. Improve the procurement process by selecting suppliers that provide higher-quality circuit boards. Required: 1. State the revenue growth and cost reduction strategy using a series of cause-and-effect relationships expressed as if-then statements. 2. Illustrate the strategy using a strategy map. 3. Explain how the revenue growth strategy can be tested. In your explanation, discuss the role of lead and lag measures, targets, and double-loop feedback.arrow_forwardMercury, Incorporated, produces cell phones at its plant in Texas. In recent years, the company's market share has been eroded by stiff competition from overseas. Price and product quality are the two key areas in which companies compete in this market. A year ago, the company's cell phones had been ranked low in product quality in a consumer survey. Shocked by this result, Jorge Gomez, Mercury's president, initiated an intense effort to improve product quality. Gomez set up a task force to implement a formal quality improvement program. Included on this task force were representatives from the Engineering, Marketing, Customer Service, Production, and Accounting departments. The broad representation was needed because Gomez believed that this was a companywide program and that all employees should share the responsibility for its success. After the first meeting of the task force, Holly Elsoe, manager of the Marketing Department, asked John Tran, production manager, what he thought of…arrow_forwardThai manufacturing Inc. began operations five years ago producing a new diagnostic instrument, it hoped to sell to doctors, dentists, and hospitals. The demand for the instrument far exceeded initial expectations, and the company was unable to produce enough of the instrument to meet the demand. Thai was manufacturing the instrument using equipment it built at the start of the operations, but it needed more efficient equipment to meet demand. Company management decided to design and build the equipment, because no equipment currently available on the market was suitable for producing the instrument. In 2018, a section of the plant was devoted to development of the new equipment and a special staff of personnel was hired. Within six months, a machine was developed at a cost of $170,000 that increased production and reduced labour cost substantially. Sparked by the success of the new machine, the company built three more machines of the same type at a cost of $80,000 each. Required: 1)…arrow_forward
- Morgan Williams Ltd (MWL) is a long-established department store in central Wellington and was for many years highly profitable. One way in which it rewarded its directors was to employ their children, who were students, over the summer break. The company paid these student-employees wages far in excess of market rates. In recent years, MWL became heavily reliant on cruise ship passengers to maintain its business. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic, the last cruise ship visited in March 2020. MWL was slow to develop an online presence. Also, many people, whose offices are in central Wellington, started to work from home. By June 2020, MWL’s sales were down by 90%, and by September 2020, MWL was in serious financial difficulty. December is usually MWL’s best month for sales, but December 2020 was a disaster and the company started to lay off staff. In March 2021, MWL failed to pay its GST and other tax liabilities. Southpac, the company’s bank, threatened to seize MWL’s stock, in terms of a…arrow_forwardAt the BlueFin Bank corporate headquarters, management was discussing the potential of outsourcing the processing of credit card transactions to DataEase, an international provider of banking operational services. Processing of the transactions at BlueFin has been a costly element of the annual profit and loss statement and the continual investment in equipment to keep up to date has been draining capital reserves. Based upon initial study and negotiations, DataEase will charge $0.02 more per transaction than BlueFin’s cost per transaction, and DataEase will want $12 million per year to cover equipment and overhead costs associated with the contract. BlueFin has yet to develop an estimate for the annual overhead and fixed costs associated with processing the transactions. These costs include supervision, administrative support, maintenance, equipment depreciation, and overhead. If BlueFin must process 20 million transactions per year, how high must those fixed costs be before it would…arrow_forwardExeter Group is a large retail company that has brick-and-mortar outlets throughout the Southeast. They have been in business for many years, but two years ago started an online sales channel to offset slowing in-store sales. The human resources (HR) department at Exeter handles tasks for the two divisions that make up Exeter: Retail and Online. Retail Division manages the company's traditional business line. This business, although still profitable, is currently not growing and may be shrinking slightly. Online Division, on the other hand, has experienced double-digit growth from the beginning. The cost allocation system at Exeter allocates all corporate costs to the divisions based on a variety of cost allocation bases. HR costs are allocated based on the average number of employees in the two divisions. There are two basic activities in the HR Department. The first is employee maintenance (payroll administration, benefits, and so on), which is an ongoing activity and requires the…arrow_forward
- Exeter Group is a large retail company that has brick-and-mortar outlets throughout the Southeast. They have been in business for many years, but two years ago started an online sales channel to offset slowing in-store sales. The human resources (HR) department at Exeter handles tasks for the two divisions that make up Exeter: Retail and Online. Retail Division manages the company’s traditional business line. This business, although still profitable, is currently not growing and may be shrinking slightly. Online Division, on the other hand, has experienced double-digit growth from the beginning. The cost allocation system at Exeter allocates all corporate costs to the divisions based on a variety of cost allocation bases. HR costs are allocated based on the average number of employees in the two divisions. There are two basic activities in the HR Department. The first is employee maintenance (payroll administration, benefits, and so on), which is an ongoing activity and requires the…arrow_forwardDuring the beginning of the 21st century, the growth in computer sales declined for the first time in almost two decades. As a result, PC makers dramatically reduced their orders of computer chips from Intel and other vendors. Explain why computer manufacturers such as Dell are likely to write relatively short contracts for computer chips.arrow_forwardA manager is trying to decide whether to buy one machine or two. If only one machine is purchased and demand proves to be excessive, the second machine can be purchased later. Some sales would be lost, however, because the lead time for delivery of this type of machine is six months. In addition, the cost per machine will be lower if both machines are purchased at the same time. The probability of low demand is estimated to be 0.20 and that of high demand to be 0.80. The after-tax NPV of the benefits from purchasing two machines together is $70,000 if demand is low and $170,000 if demand is high. If one machine is purchased and demand is low, the NPV is $100,000. If demand is high, the manager has three options: (1) doing nothing, which has an NPV of $100,000; (2) subcontracting, with an NPV of $140,000; and (3) buying the second machine, with an NPV of $120,000. What is the best decision and what is its expected payoff? Best decision is to buy nothing…arrow_forward
- A large brokerage company is assessing the introduction of a new computer system to improve routing and execution of customer orders. The managing director wants to install a new Smart Routing system, whereas another director prefers the Direct Routing system. Each machine provides the same order-execution ability and can satisfy the broker’s obligation to give investors the best possible order execution. The initial cost of each system is $170,000, but because of differing software, maintenance, and processing requirements, estimates of the after-tax costs of operation differ. These are as follows: Period Smart Routing Direct Routing 1 39,000 56,000 2 48,000 61,000 3 48,000 61,000 4…arrow_forwardKendall & Floyd provides landscaping services in Eastvale. Sara Kendall, the owner, is concerned about the recent losses the company has incurred and is considering dropping its yard cleanup services, which she feels are marginal to the company's business. She estimates that doing so will result in lost revenues of $67,800 per year (including the lost tree business from customers who use the company for both services). The present manager will continue to supervise the tree services with no reduction in salary. Without the yard cleanup business, Sara estimates that the company will save 14 percent of the equipment leases, labor, and other costs. She also expects to save 29 percent on rent and utilities. The Income statement before dropping the yard cleanup service follows. Required: a. Prepare a report of the differential costs and revenues if the yard cleanup service is discontinued. b. Should Sara discontinue the yard cleanup service? Complete this question by entering your answers…arrow_forwardThai manufacturing Inc. began operations five years ago producing a new diagnostic instrument, it hoped to sell to doctors, dentists, and hospitals. The demand for the instrument far exceeded initial expectations, and the company was unable to produce enough of the instrument to meet the demand. Thai was manufacturing the instrument using equipment itbuilt at the start of the operations, but it needed more efficient equipment to meet demand.Company management decided to design and build the equipment, because no equipment currently available on the market was suitable for producing the instrument.In 2018, a section of the plant was devoted to development of the new equipment and a special staff of personnel was hired. Within six months, a machine was developed at a cost of $170,000 that increased production and reduced labour cost substantially. Sparked by the success of thenew machine, the company built three more machines of the same type at a cost of $80,000 each.Required:1) In…arrow_forward
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