Introduction
Business organizations’ conventional goal is to realize a good financial performance and sustain their solvency amid ever-increasing competition and various kinds of unforeseen and foreseeable risks of running a business. This traditional business objective necessitates the use of informative financial statements and reports in making strategies that can enable them to improve their financial performance by predicting or estimating future business patterns with less uncertainty (Barlow, 2005, p. 146). This paper presents the Coca Cola’s annual financial report during the year 2010.
The main sections of the Report
The purpose of a company’s financial annual report is to inform relevant stakeholders about its financial statements. The annual report is a summary of the company’s operations over the previous one-year period and states the corporation’s strategies for the future. The paper organizes Coca Cola’s 2010 Annual Report into four detailed sections with each part further sub-divided into sub-sections designated as Items (E.g. Item 1, Item 1A). Part 1 provides a general overview of the company and identifies the main risk factors facing the company. This section also lists the company’s properties owned solely and in partnership and lists legal proceedings involving the company as of February 22 2011. Finally, section one identifies the company’s executive officers in charge of its various regional branches in different parts of the world. Section 1 is an important part of this report because it highlights the company’s core values and major risks, which the company believes, can be an impediment to its future success.
Section 2 is essentially the substance of this report because it comprises the main financial statements for the year 2010 alongside a summary of three previous years. The paper organizes this section into five sub-sections. Sub-section 1 provides information on company general supply scheduled and traded on the New York Stock Exchange. A company’s performance in capital markets is critical to its quest to keep on expanding it capital base. A company’s capital base in turn tells how well placed the business is to mitigate unforeseen and foreseen business risks, which can hinder the company from realizing its desired future success. This section presents selected financial data, management’s discussion, and an analysis of financial condition and results of operation and financial statements and supplementary data. The management discussion and analysis is a very important sub-section in helping the reader understand the Coca-Cola company, its operations, as well as, its current business operations. Selected financial data assist the reader to understand the company’s financial performance in year 2010 from a comparative point of view. This section also highlights internal company’s controls and procedures meant to ensure that its financial performance is properly and closely monitored. A company’s financial performance is central to its future success and survival in increasingly competitive domestic and global markets. It does not only determine how well a company is able to win new business by staging effective marketing strategies, but also its ability to fulfill its corporate social responsibility (CSR), which is critical to a company’s general performance.
Section 3 provides information about the company’s directors, executive officers, and company governance. It presents information about its code of business conduct applicable to the company’s executive officers and employees, which is available on the company’s website. A company is essentially the people who make up its leadership, management, and ordinary employees. In fact, their workers are part of its image and brands. A company’s employees including executive officers, however, must work within a framework of a predetermined code of conduct in order to ensure loyalty to company’s goals and save its reputation from intolerable behavior of people related to it. This section also provides vital information about executive compensation, principal accountant fees and services and certain relationships and related transactions and director independence by reference.
The fourth section is an exhibit and financial statement schedules part. It provides documents filed as part of the report. As Barlow (2005) points out, the exhibits incorporated therein present the reader with entropy concerning the conditions of agreements with certain parties (p.56). It is important to note that these exhibits do not give any other realistic or revealing data about the business or additional parties to the correspondences.
Major factors that influenced Coca Cola’s financial report in 2010 performance includes, but are not limited to major business risks facing the company. For instance, health consequences associated with obesity have evidently reduced demand for Coca Cola’s products. Nutritional and dietary experts have been encouraging consumers to reduce their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages because of their association with the so-called lifestyle diseases, which have been on the rise. This has resulted to reduced demand for Coca Cola’s products thereby affecting adversely the company’s financial performance. In addition, there are alterations in the non-alcoholic drinks commercial setting that have affected up on its financial performance. For instance, consumers have shifted their tastes and needs as well as consumption lifestyles due to health concerns. Furthermore, the company’s acquisition of CCE’s North American business, the sale of its Norwegian and Swedish bottling processes to the New CCE and the deconsolidation of certain entities affected its financial performance in 2010.
Primary assets held by the company
Coca-cola is a leading non-alcoholic beverage company that own many primary assets a cross the world. The company has a 35-acre office complex in Atlanta, Georgia that houses its global Headquarters. In New York, the company is the proud owner of retail buildings. Across the world, it possesses “office space, real estate, manufacturing, administrative, processing, packaging, packing storage, warehousing and retail purposes…by December 31, 2010, the company owned 65 beverage production facilities and 10 principal beverage concentrate and /or syrup manufacturing plants in North America” (United States Securities and Exchange Commission, 2011, p.22).
As of that date, it also owned 20 principal beverage concentrate manufacturing plants outside North America.
How management characterizes the internal control environment of the company
The company’s management has adopted a hands-on management approach. The management actively supervises and participates in assessing the efficiency of the plan and function of the business’ disclosure and controls. This ensures that the company’s internal controls and procedures are efficient in facilitating the provision of reliable financial data. The management affirmed that the company’s controls proved efficient as of December 31, 2010.
Conclusion
To sum up, a company’s financial performance is critical to its operations and future success because it informs its strategies and planning procedures. Therefore, a corporate annual financial report plays a significant role in providing relevant stockholders with reliable financial statements. Coca Cola’s fiscal annual report for the year 2010 is not only perfectly organized but also easy to interpret. It is also perfectly comprehensive.
References
Barlow, F. (2005). Excel models for business and operations management. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
United States Securities and Exchange Commission. (2011). The Coca Cola Company. Web.