...FLASH MEMORY INC. Name Summary Flash Memory Inc is a company operating in the computer and electronic device memory market, based in San Jose. Like many others Silicon Valley society was founded during the high tech boom of the 90s. All the founders cover the top management positions and owned the entire company’s equity. Its success was mainly due to a specialization in a niche of the market that allows it to compete with bigger and more consolidated companies. The lifecycle of their product is quite short and reflect a market with constant and quick innovation, so also the investment horizon is short term. The market in which the company is focused, SSDs, it’s raised from 400 Million $ in 2007 to 1.1 billion in 2009 and was projected to grow to 5.3 billion in 2013. Since 2007 sales steadily increased with an average growth of 7.6% per year, but investment in current asset are grown even more with an increase of 12.2 annual rate. Like the majority of the society in the technological sector they invest heavily in planning and innovation and one big question is the financial covering of its investments. Flash memory inc make an heavy use of notes payable from the company’s commercial bank and it was willing to lend up to 70% of the value of receivables but the company reached this limit and need ...
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...The CFO of Flash Memory, Inc. prepares the company's investing and financing plans for the next three years. Flash Memory is a small firm that specializes in the design and manufacture of solid state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for the computer and electronics industries. The company invests aggressively in research and development of new products to stay ahead of the competition. Increased working capital requirements force the CFO to consider alternatives for additional financing. In addition, he must also consider an investment opportunity in a new product line that has the potential to be extremely profitable. Students must prepare financial forecasts, calculate the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), estimate cash flows, and evaluate financing alternatives. This case is especially recommended as a final exam case for a standard MBA-level course in corporate finance. Subjects Include: Capital Budgeting, Cash Flows, Financial Forecasting, Long Term Financing, Net Present Value (NPV), and Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) For the Flash Memory Inc. case you will turn in both a write-up of your analysis and a spreadsheet that contains any financials or calculations you performed. The formal write-up should contain an overview of how you tackled specific issues presented in the case, how you set up the spreadsheet to present you analysis, and a discussion of any assumptions you are making. To guide you through the case, below are a set of questions you will need...
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...Flash Memory The forecast income statement (Exhibit 1) shows the profit projections for Flash Memory assuming they do not invest in the new product line. In summary, they maintain their 2009 Operating Margin of 5.5%. Net Income increases from $2,509 in 2009 to $4,096 by 2012 (a 17.8% CAGR over the three year period). All assumptions were provided in the case, but we did assume a reduction in the interest rate back to the 7.25% for the current loan in 2012, when the Notes Payable to Accounts Receivable ratio falls back below the 70% threshold. One concern not discussed in the case is the relative growth of Flash Memory vs. the SSD category. Based on the information provided, we estimate Flash’s share of the market at 15% in 2007 which rapidly declines to an estimated 2% by 2013. This underscores Flash Memory’s need to accelerate top line growth to remain a significant player in the market. The forecast balance sheet (Exhibit 2) shows the account balances for Flash Memory assuming they do not invest in the new product line. The financing requirements in 2010, 2011 and 2012 are $14,433, $17,120 and $13,228 respectively. This increase in debt levels has changed the capital structure of the firm over time, increasing debt as a percentage of capital from 28% in 2007 to as high as 39% by 2011 (vs. a target of 18%). We calculated WACC for both scenarios - funding by increasing notes payable or by the issuance of stock. For the notes funding, we assumed a 9.25% cost of...
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...Strategy Sheet, Flash memory First of all, According to Exhibit 1, 2, 3 and necessary information from background, you can forecast Income Statement and Balance sheet for the end of 2010, 2011 and 2012 if Flash Memory Inc does not plan to accept the new product line . Based on the forecast notes payables at the end of year 2010, 2011 and 2012, the external financing for each year is the differences between note payable at the end of current year and note payable at the end of former year. So, you can have a rough numbers for each year's external financing. Assuming all required external financing takes the form of additional notes payable from its commercial bank, then, you can figure out whether or not Flash Memory Inc can maintain the continued growth for each year because all the growth information and data can be found and calculated according to Growth Projections. However, If Flash Memory Inc cannot meet the requirement established by the bank who claims that the existing loan has 70 percents of accounts receivable limit, other alternatives should be used to fund external financing. Second, you need to decide whether or not Flash Memory Inc should accept the proposed investments in the new product line. Thus, you should find the NPV for this investments and 3 steps should be followed. The first step is that you have to figure out the free cash flows for 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 according to the information in investment opportunity. The second step is that you...
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...Flash Memory Inc. Strategy Paper To prepare forecasts of income statements and balance sheet one must uses growth rates and key assumptions to determine future values. Since 2007, we have measured a compound growth rate of 7.6 percent for sales each year. This percent increase will be reflected in 2010, 2011, and 2012. For the rest of the items of the income statement, we forecast the numbers based on our key assumptions. We also have key assumptions for our balance sheet that will be used to compute forecasted assets and liabilities. The forecasted income statements will help us determine our future gross margins. We can determine if our gross margins can cover our expenses. If not, external financing is needed. We can determine if our gross margins can cover our expenses. If not, external financing is needed. Our bank loan officer can offer us seventy percent of our accounts receivable in the form of a short term loan. If that is not enough, the bank loan officer suggested using the factoring division of the bank. We can receive ninety percent of our accounts receivables, but must be more aggressively monitored. In regards to our investment in new product lines, a full project analysis must be conducted. Flash memory has already spent money developing the product line from concept to an item that can be tested in the public. In addition to development costs, we must also add new plant, new equipment, and advertising costs to our initial investment. Since we have forecasted...
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...Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Analysis Precedent Transactions AnalysisUnlevered Free Cash Flow The discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis represents the net present value (NPV) of projected cash flows available to all providers of capital, net of the cash needed to be invested for generating the projected growth. The concept of DCF valuation is based on the principle that the value of a business or asset is inherently based on its ability to generate cash flows for the providers of capital. To that extent, the DCF relies more on the fundamental expectations of the business than on public market factors or historical precedents, and it is a more theoretical approach relying on numerous assumptions. A DCF analysis yields the overall value of a business (i.e. enterprise value), including both debt and equity. Download DCF Analysis Template Key Components of a DCF * Free cash flow (FCF) – Cash generated by the assets of the business (tangible and intangible) available for distribution to all providers of capital. FCF is often referred to as unlevered free cash flow, as it represents cash flow available to all providers of capital and is not affected by the capital structure of the business. * Terminal value (TV) – Value at the end of the FCF projection period (horizon period). * Discount rate – The rate used to discount projected FCFs and terminal value to their present values. DCF Methodology The DCF method of valuation involves projecting FCF over the horizon period, calculating...
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...Contents INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................... 1 IDENTIFICATION OF THE MAIN ISSUES OR PROBLEMS............................................................... 2 ANALYSIS OF CASES: ......................................................................................................................... 3 Analysis Of Data ............................................................................................................................. 3 Analysis Of Flexible Budget ............................................................................................................ 4 RECOMMENDATION ........................................................................................................................... 7 Increase Labor’s Wages ................................................................................................................... 7 Giving Reward ................................................................................................................................ 7 Training and Courses ....................................................................................................................... 7 Outsourcing or Sub Contract ............................................................................................................ 8 Overtime Payment ...................................................................................
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...Magnetic Storage Magnetic storage devices store data by magnetizing particles on a disk or tape. A floppy disk is so called because it consists of a flexible sheet of plastic, coated with iron oxide – a magnetizable material. A floppy disk drive spins at 360 revolutions per minute (rpm), so it's relatively slow. However, a hard drive spins at over 7,200 rpm and stores data on a stack of metal rotating disks called platters. This means you can store much more data and retrieve information much faster. New disks need to be formatted before you can use them, unless they come preformatted from the manufacturer. When the disk is formatted, the operating system (OS) organizes the disk surface into circular tracks and divides each track into sectors. The OS creates a directory which will record the specific location of files. When you save a file, the OS moves the read/write head of the drive towards empty sectors, records the data and writes an entry for the directory. Later on, when you open that file, the OS looks for its entry in the directory, moves the read/write heads to the correct sector, and reads the file in the RAM area. However, formatting erases any existing files on a disk, so do not format disks on which data that you don't want to lose is stored. The OS allows you to create one or more partitions on your hard drive, in effect dividing it into several logical parts. Partitions let you install more than one operating system (e.g. Windows and Linux) on your computer...
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...TERM PAPER NAND and NOR Flash Memory -by Shashank Chaudhay 2010EE10480 Abstract- This term paper is an introduction to the flash memory devices both NAND and NOR. This includes - history of flash memory - how it works - NOR flash memory type - NAND flash memory type - differences between them - limitations of flash memory 1. Introduction Two main technologies dominate the non-volatile flash memory market today: NOR and NAND. Flash memory (both NOR and NAND types) was invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka while working for Toshiba circa 1980. According to Toshiba, the name "flash" was suggested by Dr. Masuoka's colleague, Mr. Shōji Ariizumi, because the erasure process of the memory contents reminded him of the flash of a camera. NOR flash was first introduced in market by Intel in 1988, revolutionizing a market that was then dominated by EPROM and EEPROM devices. NAND flash architecture was introduced in the market by Toshiba in 1989.Most hardware engineers are not familiar with the differences between these two technologies. In fact, they usually refer to NOR architecture as “flash”, unaware of NAND flash technology and its many benefits over NOR. This is mainly due to the fact that most flash devices are used to store and run code (usually small), for which NOR flash is the default choice. Unlike Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), Flash memory is non-volatile. Non-volatile memory retains data even without being powered-on. For example, when a computer...
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...Samsung Electronics Prepared by: M. O. Prepared for: Dr. N. C. Course: Organizational Strategy, MGM 6123, Fall 2009 [pic] Date: October 5, 2009 H. State University Samsung Group is one of the leading global conglomerates originating in South Korea, termed chaebol in native terms. Their sales in 2004 climbed to $134billion with 337 overseas operations in 58 countries and they employed 212,000 people worldwide. They have myriads of businesses in a wide variety of industry sectors including electronics, finance, trade and services (Siegel and Chang, 2005). In 1974 a semiconductor company in South Korea started ‘wafer’ production. This was purchased by Samsung Company who merged the semiconductor company with their electronics division to form a ‘global powerhouse’ (Siegel and Chang, 2005). They started with producing watch chips. In the 1980s, semiconductor was decided to be the future of Samsung Group. And the company gave most of its resources to this ‘star affiliate’ (Siegel and Chang, 2005). During 1983 to 1985, Intel exited the DRAM market. Samsung still held on despite incurring losses hoping that it would someday pay off. Their persistence paid off in later years. Samsung built its first large plant in the mid 1980s. Building a semiconductor facility is difficult and time consuming, because of high sensitivity to dust and electric shock. But the Samsung workers, from the executives, engineers, down to the field laborers, were highly dedicated. One memorable...
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...System in Mobile Multimedia Devices 1 New Techniques for Real-Time FAT File System in Mobile Multimedia Devices Sunhwa Park and Seong-Young Ohm Abstract — Flash memory has become the most important storage media in the mobile multimedia products such as MP3 players, mobile phones, and digital cameras. Most mobile multimedia devices, however, use one of the conventional FAT file systems slightly modified for flash memory environments. Our analysis shows that theses file systems have some restriction in recording a live multimedia stream stably because they have irregular write response times. In this paper, we have considered the problems of the existing FAT file system and propose two new techniques to solve the problems. The first technique called Sector Reservation method reduces internal overhead effectively. And the other method called ACPA avoids the periodic cluster allocation of the conventional FAT file system and removes the frequent modifications on the file allocation table in the FAT file system. To evaluate our new techniques, we implemented a prototype Real-Time FAT file system on ARM9 board with our two novel techniques. The experimental results show that our system achieves our goal successfully in that its write response times are very deterministic and more uniform1. Index Terms — Flash memory, FAT file system, FTL, Mobile multimedia device. I. INTRODUCTION One of the distinct trends in recent years is the growth of mobile multimedia devices. Tiny MP3...
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...whitepapers or anything at your disposal to support your position. 2. In addition, what are some of the most popular storage devices available for both businesses and personal use? a. There is a plethora of different storage devices available, to figure out which is best for you, you need to know what you are storing. This information is a good idea to know ahead of time because the type of data, size of data d, and knowing if you will be transferring this information from one place to another will help to determine what will work best for you. Although the hard drive is the most well known of all storage devices, these devices come in hand Flash memory devices, such as USB drives even using an iPod or Zune are popular ways to store data in a small, mobile format. Other types of flash memory, such as compact flash and SD cards are popular ways to store images taken by digital cameras. In my opinion whether personal or business, it is best to have some sort of external hard drive and external backup system (this device mainly for business). b. Here is a website that discusses the demand for personal storage. I love this website; it seems to provide a good amount of information for computers and devices! http://www.pcworld.com/article/134981/demand_for_personal_storage_devices_to_grow.html 3. SOLID STATE DRIVES, What are the advantages of solid state drives? DISASTER PLANNING: Discuss the basic components of a disaster plan, also referred to...
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...Features • Compatible with MCS®-51Products • 2K Bytes of Reprogrammable Flash Memory • • • • • • • • • • • • – Endurance: 10,000 Write/Erase Cycles 2.7V to 6V Operating Range Fully Static Operation: 0 Hz to 24 MHz Two-level Program Memory Lock 128 x 8-bit Internal RAM 15 Programmable I/O Lines Two 16-bit Timer/Counters Six Interrupt Sources Programmable Serial UART Channel Direct LED Drive Outputs On-chip Analog Comparator Low-power Idle and Power-down Modes Green (Pb/Halide-free) Packaging Option 8-bit Microcontroller with 2K Bytes Flash AT89C2051 1. Description The AT89C2051 is a low-voltage, high-performance CMOS 8-bit microcomputer with 2K bytes of Flash programmable and erasable read-only memory (PEROM). The device is manufactured using Atmel’s high-density nonvolatile memory technology and is compatible with the industry-standard MCS-51 instruction set. By combining a versatile 8-bit CPU with Flash on a monolithic chip, the Atmel AT89C2051 is a powerful microcomputer which provides a highly-flexible and cost-effective solution to many embedded control applications. The AT89C2051 provides the following standard features: 2K bytes of Flash, 128 bytes of RAM, 15 I/O lines, two 16-bit timer/counters, a five vector two-level interrupt architecture, a full duplex serial port, a precision analog comparator, on-chip oscillator and clock circuitry. In addition, the AT89C2051 is designed with static logic for operation down to zero frequency and supports two software selectable...
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...today Define aabit and describe how aaseries of bits Define bit and describe how series of bits represents data represents data Explain how programs transfer in Explain how programs transfer in and out of memory and out of memory Differentiate among the various Differentiate among the various types of memory types of memory Describe the types of expansion slots and Describe the types of expansion slots and adapter cards adapter cards Explain the difference among aaserial port, aa Explain the difference among serial port, parallel port, aaUSB port, and other ports parallel port, USB port, and other ports Describe how buses contribute to aa Describe how buses contribute to computer’s processing speed computer’s processing speed Identify components in mobile computers Identify components in mobile computers and mobile devices and mobile devices Chapter 4 The Components of the System Unit Next The System Unit What is the system unit? Case that contains electronic components of the computer used to process data Sometimes called the chassis system unit system unit system unit The System Unit What are common components inside the system unit? Processor Memory Adapter cards Sound card Modem card Video card Network card power supply drive bays processor memory ports system unit...
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...1. BMW differentiates with Mini BMW Group is a leading global provider of premium products and services for individual mobility. Revenues are generated through three business divisions: automobiles, financial services and motorcycles. BMW focuses on the premium segments of the global passenger car and motorcycle market. The automobiles division develops, manufactures, assembles and sells passenger cars and off-road vehicles under the brands BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce. BMW acquired the Mini brand in 2001. Since this acquisition sales grew from 25,000 units in 2001 to over 232,000 units in 2008. The Mini, which is sold in more than 70 countries, is even a hit in countries that have strong local auto industries. The top five markets are Britain, with around 45,000 cars sold in 2008; the United States with 41,000; Germany 29,000; Italy 22 000; and Japan 13, 000. BMW has consistently positioned its Mini line as more than just a car. Instead it is marketed as a lifestyle brand, with a range of driver accessories and other miscellaneous branded items such as key fobs and clothing lines giving the brand more meaning to customers than being simply a car. In addition, in Mini has its own online social network, or "urban initiative", called Mini Space. A host of other marketing initiatives, both on and offline, are all designed to play on the car's perky appeal. Mini buyers have a broad and in-depth choice for their car's specification, with 372 interior configurations, including...
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