...Rosetta Stone: Pricing the 2009 IPO In the following case study we intend to analyse Rosetta Stone’s 2009 IPO. The main purpose is to come up with a reasonable estimate of the price at which the firm’s shares should be initially offered. This estimation is preceded by a general consideration of the advantages and disadvantages that going public might have for Rosetta Stone. Following this qualitative analysis, we then estimated the price at which Rosetta Stone’s shares should be offered in the 2009 IPO. In order to do so, we first determined the current market price for shares of the firm by employing a market multiples as well as discounted cash flow valuation. On the basis of these values, we estimated the IPO price and then gave a final recommendation regarding the price in which we also considered factors beyond the pure numbers, such as the difficult market environment. 1. Advantages of going public First of all, the IPO would help Rosetta Stone raise equity, giving the company the opportunity for further investment with the aim of establishing its brand globally and expanding its geographic outreach. As a publicly traded company, Rosetta Stone will receive more exposure to both national and the international capital markets, creating the opportunity to reach more investors. For example, the planned stock market listing would allow institutional customers, who currently represent 20% of Rosetta Stone’s customer base, to buy shares. Another important advantage of going...
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...ROSETTA STONE: pricing the 2009 IPO Teaching Note This case examines the April 2009 decision of Rosetta Stone management to price the initial public offering of Rosetta Stone stock during one of the most difficult periods in capital-raising history. The case outlines Rosetta Stone’s unique language-learning strategy and its associated strong financial performance. Students are invited to value the stock and take a position on whether the current $15 to $17 per share filing range is appropriate. The case is designed to showcase corporate valuation using discounted cash flow and peer-company market multiples. The epilogue details the 40% first-day rise in Rosetta Stone stock from the $18 offer price. With this backdrop, students are exposed to a well-known finance anomaly—the IPO underpricing phenomenon—and are invited to critically discuss various proposed explanations. The case provides opportunities for the instructor to develop any of the following teaching objectives: * Review the institutional aspects of the equity issuance transaction. * Explore the costs and benefits associated with public share offerings. * Develop an appreciation for the challenges of valuing unseasoned firms. * Hone corporate valuation skills, particularly using market multiples. * Evaluate the received explanations of various finance anomalies, such as the IPO underpricing phenomenon. Study Questions 1. What are the advantages and disadvantages...
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...Leaders know that to successfully run their companies they need to have a clear strategy that meets the challenges facing their organization and capitalizes on the strengths that they possess. However, even the best strategy will ultimately fail without the right people in place to execute it. Thus, the true challenge for any leader is a human capital challenge. But what exactly is human capital and how does it relate to an organization’s chances for successfully executing its strategy? In short, human capital is the sum of knowledge, abilities, skills, values, personality, ideas, motivation, behaviors and experiences owned and offered by the people within an organization. All things being equal, the better the quality of an organization’s human capital the more successful it will be. The importance of human capital to an organization’s success is even more pronounced today due to a number of crucial trends. These include: * Demographic changes – an aging workforce along with increasing diversity is forcing organizations to fight a “war for talent” * Increased focus on growth – after cutting costs to improve the bottom line there is a renewed focus on growing the top line * Knowledge, innovation, adaptability and collaboration as key drivers of success – to grow the top line, leaders have recognized that the primary sources of success are things that reside within their people * Increased importance of intangible assets, such as brand, reputation, leadership...
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...Loutskina IMPORTANT SCHEDULE ANNOUNCEMENT: Thursday, February 19 is a DAY LONG exercise that requires your participation until 5:30pm that evening. By compressing the exercise into a single day we were able to designate Friday as a Reading Day. Please DO NOT schedule any travel until after your obligation for the exercise ends at 5:30pm Thursday evening. COURSE DESCRIPTION First-Year Financial Management and Policies (FMP) reflects three important features of the Darden MBA Program: (1) it is a general management program; (2) the program, through its frequent use of the case method of instruction, has a practical, pragmatic bias and a decision- orientation; and (3) the first-year program provides the basic training on which students can build in the second-year. Consistent with the first-year program, FMP aims to provide: 1. An Introduction. The course provides the basic framework necessary to pursue further study in finance in the second-year of the MBA program and on his or her own thereafter. This framework is an orientation towards valuation. 2. Basic Mastery. The course emphasizes essentials, the tools and concepts that every general manager, entrepreneur, or manager in other functional fields should know. 3. A Corporate Perspective. Because we seek to understand the problems of general managers, this is a corporate finance course, rather than a course in investments, banking, or personal finance. While elements of these related subjects must be brought to bear, our ultimate...
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...Case Study 01- Michael Phelps: Strategizing for Gold Answer: 1) Michael Phelps won eight gold medals at Beijing Summer Olympics and also set seven new world records (“Biography.com”, n.d.). This winning launched him in the sports world to a new height and made him a global brand. His Presence in the real world and also the virtual world grew to new heights. He posts and maintains his own Facebook page with millions of “phans” whose click through rivaled popularity to the site of President Barack Obama (“Urban Dictionary”, n.d.). His presence in the social net working grew at a very rapid pace. His videos on YouTube became a favorite following for people. Numerous online blogs began on his name. The heights reached by Michael were a feat achieved by no other Olympian. After setting the world record, Phelps turned the gold medals into a cash-flow stream of more than $100 million through a variety of business activities (Tate, 2014). His official sponsors were AT&T Wireless, Kellogg`s, Omega, Power Bar, Rosetta Stone, Speedo, Visa and Pure sport. 2) Michael Phelps’s gradual growth over the years is the direct relation to Strategic Management. It involved unique resources and capabilities. Some suggestions towards Michael Phelps`s success were based on his unique physical endowments comprising of his long thin torso which reduces drag, arm span of 204 cm which is disproportionate to his 193 cm height, relatively short legs for a person...
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...The article “The Greed Cycle” is an in depth look of the advancements in the ways business compensates its heads of industry. The article links the trend of corruption among executives when there was lax regulation, and methods of fixing numbers. The question that is purposed by the article is if greed comes naturally; or if it is an evolution that corporate America creates. It is true that the creation of Sarbanes-Oxley has significantly prevented the events that occurred regarding CEOs and the stock option crisis. There have been numerous recent events, however, that have occurred with CEOs and others alike make me believe John Cassidy’s theory that there is validity to his theory of a greed cycle. The problem was regulation; there were none. Stock options were engaging executives in achieving the goals of the company, while also allowing the company to not count their stock options as a corporate expense. It was a win- win situation for both executive and company. Because of this the stock option plans for executives were an emerging trend for most well known companies. How government officials purposely denied the idea from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (F.A.S.B.) to count stock options as an expense is hard to fathom. When has there ever been a time the government not wanted to receive their share of someone’s fortune? The greed of senators receiving money from lobbyist helped the system stay intact in 1994: after they threatened to shut down the F.A...
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...Full Service Travel in Brazil Explore the World LLC Team C: MGMT 598 International Business Professor Wendy Finlay December 15, 2013 Table of Contents 1.0 Executive Summary3 2.0 Country Factors3 2.1 Political and Legal4 2.2 Economic4 2.3 Cultural5 3.0 Competition6 4.0 Market Opportunity9 5.0 SWOT Analysis: Implications12 5.1 Strengths12 5.2 Weaknesses14 5.3 Opportunities15 5.4 Threats16 6.0 Business Objectives16 7.0 Strategic Thrust17 8.0 Tactics19 8.1 Human Resources19 8.1.1 Recruiting and Staffing19 8.1.2 Training and Development20 8.1.3 Performance Management21 8.1.4 Compensation & Rewards21 8.2 Financial Risks22 8.3 Products and Services23 8.4 Pricing24 8.5 Promotion25 8.6 Distribution27 9.0 Measurement of Results28 Global Business Strategy: Full Service Travel in Brazil 1.0 Executive Summary Explore the World LLC desires to create a concierge, high-end travel agency/experience in Brazil. Our new office will be located in a place yet to be determined in Brazil and we are thinking of transportation, accommodations, private guided tours, cultural lessons, and language lessons. Essentially, the business plans to make the experience more than just seeing the sights, but experiencing the culture and lifestyle as a whole. This service can be used by both business and vacation travelers. In addition to direct personal service we will have a website to allow people to survey our offerings...
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...Workplace,Business & Ethics on evaluation of job ethical standards in Wal-Mart in South Carolina In Partial Fulfillment of Business Research and Project BUS 499 Nagliesha L Miles Supervisor: Dr. Mmutakaego Chukwuanu Allen University Date: December 8,2010 Table of content Table of Content...............................................................................................................2 Abstract............................................................................................................................3 List of Illustrations Wal-Mart earnings preview......................................................................................13 U.S Retail food pricing.................................................................................14 Chapter 1 Introduction.....................................................................................................................5 Background information.......................................................................................5 Statement of problem............................................................................................5 Hypothesis............................................................................................................6 Chapter 2 Literature Review...........................................................................................................8 Chapter 3 Methodology.................................................
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...Duolingo: Global at Inception “We believe everyone should have access to education of the highest quality – for free” -Duolingo’s Team On June19th, 2012 a new platform for learning different languages, Duolingo, was released to the market in the hopes of providing high quality education to the masses. Nowadays, Duolingo has over 100 million users, has won awards like the IPhone app of the year and Google’s best of the best in 2013 among others (Duolingo, s.f.). This paper will focus on how Duolingo was born and has successfully expanded throughout markets around the world using internationalization theory “Born globals” as base. History Luis von Ahn, computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and inventor of the CAPTCHA, and his PhD student, Severin Hacker, wanted to begin an academic project together and were looking for a subject to work on. They realized that the language education market was highly underserved because most people who wanted to learn another language wanted to do so to improve their economical situation and get better paid jobs, and most of these people didn’t have the money to afford a foreign language course on any of the options available like universities or online courses like Open English. So they decided to come up with a way to provide high quality language education for free. Creating and providing the best language education system for free (as von Ahn and Hacker intended to) was not an easy task, these kind of projects...
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...KNOWLEDGES FOR PRESERVING CULTURAL DIVERSITY – Vol. II - The Impact Of Media On Literature - William Egginton and Bernadette Wegenstein THE IMPACT OF MEDIA ON LITERATURE William Egginton and Bernadette Wegenstein The Johns Hopkins University Keywords: media, media studies, media theory, history of media, new media, comparative literature Contents U SA NE M SC PL O E – C EO H AP LS TE S R S 1. Introduction 2. Current Media Theory and Media Studies 2.1. Origins of Discipline 2.2. New Media Theory 3. Historical Examples 3.1. Oral Transmission 3.2. Pictography 3.3. The Andean Khipu 3.4. Manuscript 3.5. Print 3.6. Theater 3.7. Photography 3.8. Moving Image 3.9. Radio and Television 3.10. The Digital 4. Conclusion Acknowledgements Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketches Summary The growing consensus among literary scholars is that the meaning of literature cannot be properly studied or understood outside of the specific medium of its transmission and archival. This realization can be considered a revolution in literary studies, and its fundamental ramification is the confluence of literary studies and theory with media studies and theory. The fields of media studies and media theory are dedicated to the analysis and understanding of the myriad media through which information is communicated. Under the influence of these fields, the media through which literature is communicated is no longer considered secondary to the literary...
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...Division of Fine Arts, Speech and Commercial Music Northwest College ARTS 1303 – Art History I CRN 42838 – Spring 2015 SPBR Campus - Room 602 / 8:00-9:30am / T,R Credit:3 / 3 hour lecture course / 48 hours per semester Course length : 16 weeks/ Type of Instruction Traditional (Face-to-Face) Instructor: David Swaim Instructor Contact Information: Email: david.swaim@hccs.edu Phone: (713) 718-5674 Due to changes in the state core curriculum this syllabus is subject to change!!!! Office location and hours SPBR room AD4 hours: 7:15-8:00 am and as per class discussion Please feel free to contact me concerning any problems that you are experiencing in this course. You do not need to wait until you have difficulties or have received a poor grade before asking for my assistance. Your performance in my class is very important to me. I am available to hear your concerns and just to discuss course topics. Feel free to come by my office anytime during these hours. Course Description This course is a global investigation of the styles and methods of artistic production covering Prehistoric through Gothic periods. Media studied include: drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, printmaking, textiles, ceramics, and metal arts. Using this framework, universal themes are studied within their historical, political, economic, theological, sociological, and ethnic contexts. Prerequisites Must be placed into college-level reading and college-level writing Academic...
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...In 2009, daily deals firms sprouted up on the digital landscape like eager-to-bloom crocus flowers often seen at this time of year. But more recently a late winter freeze has buzz sawed through one flowery bulb after another, as hundreds of daily deals upstarts have fallen by the wayside because they couldn’t develop in the harshly competitive climate. Could a big one—LivingSocial—actually be the next to wither away? Sources familiar with the company say they wouldn’t be surprised if the industry’s No. 2 player, trailing only Groupon, was sold to a larger company or liquidated piece by piece by spring 2014. They say LivingSocial has lacked the speed to adjust to a space that’s increasingly becoming more complex. Even worse for this nascent field, the marketplace has gotten a lot more crowded. Dozens of outfits from Yelp to marketing giants such as American Express and Bank of America—to even companies that enable retailers to set up their own offers—now provide innovative ways to link customers with local merchants. Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru-Kodali says neither LivingSocial nor Groupon are too big to fail—even if the latter still has cash reserves in the billions from its 2011 initial public offering. “The daily deals space is saturated,” she says, “and it never provided tremendous value to merchants. And that was the fundamental flaw in the business model. They’ve survived over the last few years even when these truths were obvious because they’ve reduced...
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...BUSN 204 – Case Problems in Business Strategic Profile and Case Analysis Purpose (page 12-1) Zuckerberg and his top management team knew that they needed to consider how to adjust the firm's strategies to compete as a public company, partly in response to the belief among some users and analysts that Facebook was losing its ability to satisfy customers and shareholders simultaneously. In this regard, what should the firm do strategically to ensure its long-term and profitable growth? While Facebook's advertiser base is constantly looking to the firm for additional innovative means to target users, its investors are questioning its ability to monetize its user base. Relatedly, in a highly dynamic and competitive industry, how will Facebook out-innovate its rivals and retain customer “mind-share”? Along with his top management team, Zuckerberg concluded that the firm should focus on both worldwide and domestic market growth. With many recent product innovations and strategic changes, 2013 and the few years beyond were expected to defining ones for the young, public social networking firm. Situational Analysis (pages 12-3--12-4) One of the most innovative creations in the twenty-first century is social networks. Connecting the world through schools, families, businesses, photos, and just about every other piece of information, social networks thrive on people sharing their life stories. In the last ten years, the most important networks have been Facebook, Myspace, Twitter...
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...|Aspects of Women's Spirituality in Tending to the Dying | |By Leslene della-Madre | |s Page | | | | | |For many of us, death is something we would rather not think about. Why is this? Why do we not want to understand the deepest mystery of | |life? Why are we so afraid to die? These are some of the questions that beckoned me on a journey to learn about the true nature of death, | |resulting in a recently published book, Midwifing Death: Returning to the Arms of the Ancient Mother, weaving together knowledge about how| |our pre-patriarchal ancestors viewed life and death with modem stories telling how the sacred passage of death and dying can be midwifed | |in grace, love and beauty, which are all aspects of the sacred feminine in women's spirituality--the oldest spirituality on the planet. | |What I have discovered, or rather, uncovered, from the forgotten realms of our ancestors...
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...Marketing Mix “The four P approach has led to a manipulative attitude to people” (Gummesson, 2002:285). “What marketing deserves is new approaches, new paradigms, which are more market oriented” (Gronroos, 2002:140). “We propose that the mix has now reached its vanishing point, and we argue that marketing requires a new paradigm” (O’Malley & Patterson, 2002:50). What is common among the above three quotations is the fact that they are all against the Marketing mix. They also share the common belief that it’s time for a radical change, one where the 4Ps are rejected for a new paradigm. But the importance of the 4Ps is being undermined. Despite its limitations, they still form the base which is being used by modern organizations. This paper attempts to show the importance of the marketing mix for modern marketers and that it cannot be relegated from modern marketing strategy. The paper is divided into six parts. Beginning with the introduction it then moves on to the development of the marketing mix theory. The third part contains the literature review of the mix. The fourth asserts that marketing mix in conjunction with RM and CRM can result in a successful marketing strategy and the fifth uses Lexus as an example to prove this assertion. It ends with the conclusion. What Is Marketing Mix? The Oxford Dictionary of Business and Management’s definition of the Marketing Mix is of “the factors controlled by a company that can influence consumers’ buying of its products” (Anon...
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