Financial analysts, investors, lenders, auditors, and many others perform ratio analysis to help review and evaluate a company’s financial statements and financial performance. This analysis allows the stakeholder to gain an understanding of the financial health of the company and gives insights to allow more insightful and, hopefully, more effective decision making.

In this lab, you will access XBRL data to complete data analysis and generate financial ratios to compare the financial performance of several companies. Financial ratios can more easily be calculated using spreadsheets and XBRL. You will (1) select an industry to analyze, (2) create a copy of a spreadsheet template, (3) input ticker symbols from three U.S. public companies, and (4) calculate financial ratios and make observations about the state of the companies using these financial ratios.

The company and competitor you should choose from are:

Company

Symbol

Target

TGT

Walmart

WMT

Home Depot

HD

Lowes

LOW

Nike

NKE

Under Armour

UAA

AT&T