Gloating

[ricevermicelli]

These are the basic results for the latest round of the business simulation I'm working on this quarter:

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
                       SUMMARY OF YEAR 9 RESULTS
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
                          Revenue*  EPS**  ROE***  Stock   Credit  Image
   Company Name           ($000s)   ($)     (%)    Price   Rating  Rating
  ---------------------   -------  ------  ------  ------  ------  ------
   ATeam                   172846   0.41     3.6    20.41    C+      58
   B Company                67311  -1.80   -18.3     9.94    B       45
   C Co. DBA Team 404      360507   2.18    16.2    32.16    A-      89
   D Company               461172   3.28    21.8    49.20    A-     100
  E Company          447065   6.85    38.5    62.50    A       96
 

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    * Represent total Year 9 sales revenues.
   ** Represent total Year 9 earnings per share.
  *** Represents the overall ROE for Year 9.
 

We are as GODS among imaginary business people, baby! And our stock is up nearly $20 from the previous round.

(Edited because we are not as gods among people who post tables.)

Comments

[drwex]

Good deal! I'd invest in that company.

[robbbbbb.livejournal.com]

Nah. It's overpriced, now. It's a hot commodity and it's blown into a bit of a bubble. We should've bought in a couple months ago.

Hindsight, alas.

(Nice job on the project work, there. Shows your instructor has faith in you.)

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

We're paying high dividends (which, with our EPS, we can well afford), and we've instituted a modest stock repurchase program. We currently have no debt, having paid off the loan we took to finance a plant expansion in year 6 (it's currently year 9). There is one more simulation round, during which we will attempt to maintain or expand our market share in all regions, while decreasing our manufacturing costs so that we can cut prices while maintaining our profit margins.

The project results are spat out at us by a computer program, so they are not an indication of instructor confidence, but we've been breathing down Team D's neck for a few weeks now. We're a bit past them by most measures today.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to know what the "business simulation" is like. How much work is involved for each team? What sort of decisions do you have to make?

Congratulations, in any case! (Maybe your next goal should be to flex your corporate muscle by driving a weaker competitor into the ground. Sure, the publicity as weeping employees carry their personal effects from the shuttered ATeam offices might reduce your Image Rating a little, but the looks on their faces would make it all worthwhile.)

(Wow. That last bit was surprisingly hard to write. This is why I don't role-play evil characters.)

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

The simulation is pretty canned stuff, and involves an hour or so of decision-making each round. Some weeks have one round, some have two. This particular simulation involves imaginary companies selling imaginary cameras. each company is set up with different, but basically equal, advantages and disadvantages. There are targets for each of the measures shown, and points awarded for doing better than others. I don't know that the implosion occurring over on Teams A and B is inevitable, but I suspect that some of the worse they're doing is because Teams D and E are attracting their imaginary investors. (Some of the worse, however, is because they chose to try and be discount providers of substandard products, and are discovering that you always lose a race to the bottom.) Team D seems to have dedicated this round to treading water, and their stock price is in decline. There is no way that we could sustain our growth indefinitely, but we can probably keep things going for one more round... and there is only one more.