It is common practice for retail outlets to lease their store locations and distribution centers. Walmart is no exception. Note 11 to Walmart’s consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2016 (found online at the text website or available for download in the investor relations section of Walmart’s website), provides information on future operating lease commitments.
Effectively capitalize the operating lease obligations. You must first choose and justify an interest rate. Assume that all cash flows occur at the end of each year.
Recompute the long-term debt to long-term capital ratio (see Chapter 5) using your capitalized operating leases. Comment on the results.
Case 7.2 Oracle Corporation: Share- based Compensation Effects
Compute Oracle’s long-term debt to shareholders’ equity ratio for May 31, 2008 and 2007. Identify the increases in shareholders’ equity in 2008 from share-based compensation plans. Calculate the long-term debt to shareholders’ equity ratio that would have occurred had Oracle not implemented the stock repurchase plan. Comment on the potential effect on future ROE of Oracle’s financing strategy.
Retained earnings increase because of net income and decrease because of dividends declared. Why, then, did Oracle decrease retained earnings when it repurchased common stock?
Of the first five changes listed in the shareholders’ equity section, one of them, the common stock repurchase, clearly represents a cash outflow. Identify the cash flow effects of the other four items. Where will each cash flow effect be reported in the statement of cash flows?
Oracle engages in many transactions with nonowners (that is, customers, suppliers, and the government) that increase net assets. For example, Oracle’s foreign subsidiaries perform services on credit with unrelated third-party customers. The accounts receivable generated by the transactions are denominated in a foreign currency and thus are reported on the foreign subsidiaries’ balance sheet in that foreign currency. The consolidation process causes the subsidiary’s accounts receivable to be added to the parent company’s (Oracle’s) accounts receivable and reported on Oracle’s Consolidated Balance Sheet. Assuming that the foreign currency strengthens relative to the U.S. dollar, how does Oracle’s Consolidated Statement of Shareholders’ Equity capture the increases in accounts receivable described in this example transaction?
Using the foreign currency translation gain of $300 million as a context, present an argument for including the gain on Oracle’s income statement and an argument for excluding the gain as Oracle does under U.S. GAAP.
Under Oracle’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan, employees can purchase common shares at 95% of their fair values. Will Oracle report a loss on this transaction? Why or why not?
Case 7.3 Long-term Solvency Risk
Using the information in the exhibits, provide a comprehensive and detailed comparison of the long-term solvency risk of Southwest to Lufthansa as of December 31, 2008, and as of December 31, 2007. (Ignore tax effects. Deferred taxes are covered in Chapter 8 on operating activities.)
(1)
Consider the following ratios in your analysis:
(2)
Compute the ratios using financial information (a) as reported and (b) after capitalization of operating leases. (Hint: Adjusting operating cash flow for assumed lease capitalization requires the removal of rent paid from operating cash flows and the inclusion of interest paid in operating cash flows. Use rent expense and interest expense to approximate rent paid and interest paid, respectively.
An analyst who compares the debt ratios of firms under U.S. GAAP and IFRS must consider key differences in the two sets of standards related to convertible debt and troubled debt restructurings. In general, which system would most likely yield lower debt and higher equity? Explain.
