Taiwan¡¦s DRAM has high technology, strong capital, and standardized products, but it still can not be escaped from economic fluctuations. With this impact, Taiwan¡¦s DRAM has faced the problem of cash flow imbalance; moreover, the problem is going from bad to worse. The study is based on the view of system dynamics and focuses on fixed assets and investment skills of the investment-cash flow, operating cash flow, and business cycles of Taiwan¡¦s DRAM. It considers the features of dynamic complex, including loop, time delay and nonlinear and constructs a system dynamics model. The model would apply key elements to suppose an investment strategy and then to mimic an investment situation. The aim of the study will figure out the suitable investment strategy to assistant Taiwan¡¦s DRAM making the most of its inputs. The study discovers: (1) the best investment strategy for 10 year is 5.0 (to invest three fixed asset sets); for 30 year is 6.0 (to invest manufacturing skills and one fixed asset set) and 7.0 (to invest manufacturing skills and two fixed asset sets), (2) the most effective element for investment strategy in the long run is to invest fixed asset sets rather than upgrading manufacturing skills, (3) to keep investing in semiconductor fabrications would endanger Taiwan¡¦s DRAM itself; hence the superior limit investment quantity for fixed assets are five to six sets,(4) the best investment timing for Taiwan¡¦s DRAM is the first two business cycle season, and (5)when Taiwan¡¦s DRAM faces economic downturn, the effective investment strategy for it is few. If Taiwan¡¦s DRAM doesn¡¦t change its industrial structure, it will face the high risk of loss.

In spite of the well-accepted belief of the relationship between cash flow and stock price, there are some controversies about whether cash flow is a good value driver in terms of explaining the volatility of stock prices, when compared with other value drivers, such as earnings or dividends. Most of the previous studies that have focused on the relationship between stock price and cash flow have used cross-industries data, primarily S&P 500 index. These studies do not distinguish service industry from manufacturing industry. However, the service industry is different from manufacturing in many ways. These differences make cash play different roles in the daily operation between the service industry and the manufacturing industry. Given these factors, whether the relationship between stock price and cash flow identified in previous studies will hold in the casual theme restaurant industry is the question this study tries to answer. Therefore, a set of 20 casual theme restaurant companies are selected through the COMPUSTAT database as the sample of this study. In this study, the performance of cash flow, earnings and dividends helping to explain the stock price move will be compared and ranked under the setting of casual theme restaurants. This result will provide the management of casual theme restaurants a guideline, which explains how to maintain the stock price increase and minimize the volatility by monitoring the most important value driver of the industry. The methodology of this study will follow the traditional multiple valuation model. The logic of this model is to compare the pricing error of different value drivers and determine which one is the best. The results of this study show that operating cash flow outperformed earnings and dividends in the multiple valuation tests. This is different from the results of previous studies that earnings has the strongest explanatory power in the variance of share price. / Master of Science

When a company sells shares of their business to the public for the first time, it is called an Initial Public Offering, IPO. The IPO is usually conducted by the issuing firm to raise capital for their future growth. Before the IPO the information about the issuing company is often limited and the investment in an IPO is associated with risks. The investors who choose to invest in an IPO are therefore usually compensated with a discount on the shares and often experience a first day positive return. This first day positive return is the definition of underpricing. If the majority of the IPOs are underpriced it should be of interest for an investor to take part of this opportunity and use it as an investment strategy. This thesis investigates if there is a way to predict which IPOs that will generate a positive first day return based on the information in the IPO prospect. / En IPO är det första erbjudandet av företagets aktier till den publika marknaden. En IPO genomförs ofta i samband med att företaget behöver ta in nytt kapital för framtida investeringar. Innan ett företag blir publikt är informationsinsynen begränsad vilket medför en risk för den som vill investera i det initiala erbjudandet. Investerarna som väljer att investera i erbjudandet är ofta kompenserade med en rabatt på aktierna och får då ofta en positiv avkastning på första handelsdagen. Denna initiala avkastning definieras som underprissättningen av erbjudandet. Om en majoritet av börsnoteringarna är underprissatta skulle det vara av stort intresse för investerare att upprepande investera i IPOs och ha detta som investeringsstrategi. Den här uppsatsen undersöker om det går att förutspå vilka IPOs som genererar en positiv avkastning första handelsdagen baserat på den informationen som finns att tillgå i IPO prospektet. / Civilekonom-uppsats

The thesis deals with the manipulation of earnings reporting aka earnings management. The initial focus of the thesis is on the earnings management motivations and two ways how to achieve that. Firstly, earnings can be influenced by the management decisions to carry out some transactions without any economic sense. Secondly, there are creative accounting processes to manipulate earnings in required way, what we mainly pay attention to in the thesis. The theoretical part referring to particular earnings management techniques and the quality of earnings is followed by the practical part analyzing earnings management of the most famous companies regarding accounting scandals in history using specific measures. There are model examples to demonstrate these specific quality earnings measures based on the relation between income, accruals and operating cash flow stated before analyze itself.

This diploma work assess the financial health of the company in the years 2002–2006 on the basis of selected methods of the financial analysis. It includes proposals of possible solutions of identified problems which should result in the improvement of financial situation of the firm in the following years.