Garmin Ltd. Company Analysis

For my FIN-330: Corporate Finance course, I was tasked with analyzing a U.S. based company that was not in the financial services industry, didn't have a major bank-like division, and had a positive net income for the last two years. As a result, I chose Garmin Ltd., which is an American multinational technology company that specializes in G.P.S. technology for the automotive, aviation, marine, outdoor, and sport activity industries. With that being said, I first had to analyze the company's Corporate Governance Structure to see how and if it affected the company's financial decision making process. Next, I had to calculate the correct Risk-Free Rate and Market Risk Premium for the company and the various countries in which it operates. Third, I had to find out who Garmin's Marginal Investors were, what its' Annualized Jensen's Alpha was / meant, and what its' Cash-Corrected Bottom-Up Beta was. Fourthly, I had to calculate Garmin's Return On Equity and Return On Capital for each of the last two fiscal years, and say whether or not I thought these numbers were good or bad. Lastly, I had to analyze the Optimal Capital Structure for Garmin in order to determine how much debt and equity they should use when funding for future projects. Ultimately, I learned several skills throughout this project:

How to use the E.D.G.A.R. database to look up company's financial statements and analyze them
How to do basic financial analysis on a company to determine what minimum return is necessary for them to invest in a project, and what the proper amount of debt and equity is to fund said project
How to properly write a financial report so that complex calculations and situations can be easily understood and acted upon