Document for Analysis: Improving a Negative, Discourteous, and Unprofessional Message (L. O. 4, 5) Communication Technology E-mail Team Your Task Analyze the following e-mail to be sent by the vice president to all supervisors and managers. In teams or individually, discuss the tone and writing faults in this message. Your instructor may ask you to revise the e-mail so that it reflects some of the writing techniques you learned in this chapter. How can you make this e-mail more courteous, positive, concise, precise, and audience-oriented? Consider revising it as a collaboration project using Word's Track Changes and Comment features. To: All Supervisors and Departmental Managers From: Richard Mangrove, Vice President, Employee Relations Subject: Dangerous Employee Performance Evaluations All, This is something I hate to do, but I must warn you that recently one of our employees filed a lawsuit against the company because of comments a supervisor made during a performance evaluation. This did not have to happen. Look, people, you must do better! Because none of you are dense, here are suggestions you must share with all supervisors and managers regarding companywide evaluations: You cannot accurately evaluate an employee's performance unless you have a system to measure that performance. That's why the obvious very first step is developing performance standards and goals for each employee. To be effective, these standards and goals must be shared with the employee. However, don't do it orally. Do it in writing. The performance of each employee must be monitored throughout the year. Keep a log for each worker. Note memorable incidents or projects in which he was involved. But don't just keep favorable comments. I know that many of you are understandably averse to placing negative comments in an employee's file. However, MAN UP! Even negative comments must be included as part of the evaluation process. Once a year each employee must be formally evaluated in a written performance appraisal—yes, I do mean writing! In a face-to-face meeting, let the employee know what you think they did well and what areas the employee may be able to improve. Be specific, give deadlines, be honest, and be realistic. Giving evaluations can be difficult. With careful preparation, however, the process can be smooth and safe. Don't allow yourself or the company to get involved in any more legal ramifications. Richard Mangrove [Complete contact information]

Sabrina gupta, an investment advisor with a major brokerage firm, was examining wal-mart stores, inc. (wal-mart) stock and its valuation. gupta wondered whether to recommend the stock to any of her new clients or to existing clients who did not currently have wal-mart in their portfolios.her key task was to use an intrinsic value approach to price the shares and to then compare the resulting price with the price at which the stock was traded in the market. gupta wanted to use alternative valuation methods and assumptions to produce intrinsic value estimates for wal-mart stock.she was interested in seeing if the alternative methods would point to a consensus regarding the valuation of the stock and to see if the valuations suggested an investment opportunity given the current market price. methods she contemplated to use were: multi-stage growth modelprice earnings multiplemost valuation methods gupta considered required a common set of inputs: future cash flows to wal-mart investorsgrowth rate of future cash flowsdiscount factor or required rate of return by wal-mart investorsgupta gathered data to determine each of the above.gupta thought that dividends to wal-mart shareholders would adequately capture the cash flows to wal-mart shareholders; she also thought that this approach would simplify her task and she would revisit more complex valuation models if she felt the need.gupta thought that capm would provide her a relatively reliable estimate of the required rate of return. capm based required rate of return can be estimated by using a risk free rate, systematic risk of the firm and equity market risk premium. gupta thought that in a valuation exercise that involve long term cash flows, 10-year government bond yield would be an appropriate risk free rate of return estimate. she checked the 10 year note rate and found out that it was about 3.68%. gupta searched for wal-mart beta in bloomberg. bloomberg estimates betas by regressing the s& p 500 returns on the firm returns over the past two years and arrives at a “raw” beta estimate. bloomberg makes an adjustment in raw beta based on some academic research. gupta is confident that bloomberg adjustment is justified and she uses wal-mart beta estimate of 0.66 in her analysis.while gupta is aware of the importance of emrp assumption, she thinks that bloomberg’s historical estimate of 5.05% is a safe assumption. she is aware of the fact that some studies suggest a larger risk premium of approximately six per cent, while others suggest a much lower forward-looking premium of less than four per cent. she is mindful of the arbitrariness of her assumption, and she takes a note to revisit this issue if her valuations produce unreasonable estimates.anticipated dividend growth (g) is often estimated in a variety of ways.first, observed historical dividend growth can be assumed to continue in a perpetual fashion.second, future dividend growth can be estimated on the basis of recent estimates of analysts.gupta noted that the consensus annual wal-mart dividend for fiscal year 2011 was $1.21, and one respected analyst had estimated the expected constant dividend growth (in perpetuity) at approximately 3%.as the chart suggests, both earnings and dividend growth rates are declining but they seem to be higher than the “respected analyst’s” estimates. gupta decides to use several alternative perpetual growth assumptions to see the impact on price. since gupta decided to use variants of dividend discount model (ddm), she checked the anticipated earnings for 2011. analyst’s estimates suggested $4.10 earnings per share. gupta decided to use 10% growth rate from 2011 to 2012 and assumed a steady decline to 3% in 13 years (until 2024) where the perpetual growth rate of 3% resumes. she also assumed that walmart will increase its dividend payout ratio from 30% to 55% from years 2012 to 2024. you are asked to reproduce gupta’s analysis of multi-stage growth model and double check her valuation by using an earnings multiple. you have all the data you need to conduct the multi stage discounted growth model analysis, but you will need to do some research about the multiples valuation.