- How do they use visuals to keep attention?
The company annual reports that have been selected for this paper are that of Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices Corporation. The main references used in comparing these two reports are the two companies’ respective annual reports. Simply we, have extracted the companies’ respective annual reports from their respective websites, studied it, and compared them in terms of their contents, and the way how the information inside each report was presented. Both reports can generally be considered dull in terms of the visual aids. No pictures were used in both reports.
It may be important no note, however, that Intel Corporation’s report was more visually stimulating compared to that of AMD thanks to their decision to use colored tables and blue colored fonts to highlight important data and figures, which was in contrast to what AMD did in their report—the company only used purely black and white to report their financial data and figures. This may be a little disappointing because these two companies are considered to be two of the greatest in the technology industry but it appears that they are not using their expertise in publishing their annual reports.
- What differences do you see in the letters from the CEOs?
Between the two, we consider the letter from the CEO of Intel Corporation to be more sensible, sensational, and believable compared to that of its competitor, AMD . This may be because we already know that what Intel Corporation’s CEO was saying on their 2013 annual report is backed by evidence and not just pure buff. On AMD’s end, on the other hand, its CEO kept on apologizing to the investors about the poor performance of the company in the past years.
- How do they present number-heavy information? Do they rely mainly on tables and graphs? Do they give prose summaries?
Both companies relied mainly on tables and graphs. What is good about the two companies’ respective annual reports is that they both used tables and graphs to present number-heavy information but they did not fail to explain what such tables and graphs meant using prose summaries.
- Is the writing easy to understand?
Both companies’ annual report was fairly easy to understand. This can also be true for a person who does not have a strong background in financial management or business. Both reports were crafted in a way that will be easy for the investors and other stakeholders of the company to understand—which is one of the most important qualities that company annual financial reports should have. After all, the purpose of releasing an annual report is to communicate the company’s performance to its stakeholders.
- Do you see places where negative information is given a positive spin?
The answer to this question is yes, at least in the case of AMD. Compared to the two, AMD is the company that is presently struggling both financially and administratively and so among the two companies whose annual reports we are comparing, it is the one that is more likely to communicate fundamentally negative information as if they were a positive sign.
- Is one report easier to understand than the other? Why?
After having read both reports, I can say that no one report is easier to understand than the other. Both reports were presented perfectly and how they were expected to be.
- Is one report more interesting than the other? Why?
This part of the analysis of the two companies’ annual reports may be a little bit biased. At this point we find the annual report of AMD Corporation more interesting than that of Intel Corporation mainly because the company is currently at a point where we can see the real ability of the company’s leaders to turn things around towards the positive side.
- Is one report more convincing than the other? Why?
We consider both reports to be equally convincing because the past information they presented (e.g. the annual revenues for the past three fiscal years) appear to be consistent with the information they released the past few years, which can be an indicator that they have not manipulated any information in their reports.
Works Cited
Advanced Micro Devices Corporation. "Annual Report 2013." Advanced Micro Devices Corporation (2014).
Intel Corporation. "Annual Report 2013." Intel Corporation (2014).
