Fiber optics have been "too good for their own good," fueling an over-reliance on (wireless) cloud computing that now requires integrated photonics to relieve the increasing demands society makes of the technology. Can you think of another example where such a back-and-forth between a technology's capability and society's response has guided its evolution?

Chang corp. has $375,000 of assets, and it uses only common equity capital (zero debt). its sales for the last year were $595,000, and its net income was $25,000. stockholders recently voted in a new management team that has promised to lower costs and get the return on equity up to 15.0%. what profit margin would the firm need in order to achieve the 15% roe, holding everything else constant? a. 9.45%b. 9.93%c. 10.42%d. 10.94%e. 11.49%

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.

Milden company has an exclusive franchise to purchase a product from the manufacturer and distribute it on the retail level. as an aid in planning, the company has decided to start using a contribution format income statement. to have data to prepare such a statement, the company has analyzed its expenses and has developed the following cost formulas: cost cost formula cost of good sold $35 per unit sold advertising expense $210,000 per quarter sales commissions 6% of sales shipping expense ? administrative salaries $145,000 per quarter insurance expense $9,000 per quarter depreciation expense $76,000 per quarter management has concluded that shipping expense is a mixed cost, containing both variable and fixed cost elements. units sold and the related shipping expense over the last eight quarters follow: quarter units sold shipping expense year 1: first 10,000 $ 119,000 second 16,000 $ 175,000 third 18,000 $ 190,000 fourth 15,000 $ 164,000 year 2: first 11,000 $ 130,000 second 17,000 $ 185,000 third 20,000 $ 210,000 fourth 13,000 $ 147,000 milden company’s president would like a cost formula derived for shipping expense so that a budgeted contribution format income statement can be prepared for the next quarter. required: 1. using the high-low method, estimate a cost formula for shipping expe