The document provides guidelines for a term project analyzing the performance of the publicly traded firm Carlisle Companies, Inc. Students must form groups of three to collect data and write a report making recommendations. The report should include: (1) describing the firm and industry; (2) analyzing economic conditions; (3) performing ratio analysis; (4) estimating value metrics; (5) valuing the firm; (6) forecasting financial needs; and (7) recommendations for improving performance. Students are to use sources such as Bloomberg, IBISWorld, and Mergent Online.

1. Phillip Ghazanfari
FRL 3671 Fall 2019
Term Project Guide
Form a team of three to collect information for analyzing the
performance of a publicly traded firm that pays dividend,
making recommendation on improving the firm’s performance,
and writing a report like a consultant. The name of the firm is
Carlisle Companies, Inc. In order to help your team with this
task, a rather structured guideline is provide below.
The Content
The analysis and report should include the following seven
items.
1. The Firm’s Description: Identify your firm’s industry and its
peer group. Describe the type of business activity the firm is
engaged. The source of your information should include IBIS
World and Mergent.
2. The Economic and Industry Conditions: Describe the impacts
of the current and expected economic conditions on (a) your
firm’s industry and (b) on your firm. Make use of the economic
indicators. Sources should include IBIS World and Conference
Board
3. Ratio Analysis: What do the five major categories of ratio
indicate about your firm? Use both cross-sectional and trend
Analysis. State what the numbers are revealing. There is no
need for general description of ratios, just the application in
this case.
4. EVA and MVA: Estimate Economic Value Added and Market
Value Added for your firm based on the most recent available

2. data. Interpret the numbers.
5. Free Cash Flow Valuation: Estimate the value of firm based
on the Free Cash Flow method using the publicly available
analysts’ estimate of the future rates of growth.
6. Financial Need Forecast: Estimate additional funds needed
based on the expected one-year sales growth. State what should
be based on financing need of financing surplus that you find.
Do growth sensitivity analysis.
7. WriteRecommendation for Improvement: Provide a precise
set of recommendations for improving the performance of your
firm. This should be based on your work in steps I through 6.
You can make use of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
threats (SWOT) analysis as well. If you would like, you may do
additional analysis before writing this section 7. The report
should be 10 pages, 1.5 spaced.
Sources of Data
Your project should use data from Bloomberg and from the CPP
Library online databases. The data from the CPP Library should
include, but not be limited to IBISWorld, S&P, Value Line
Mergent Online, and the Conference Board. Use of additional
authentic sources of information is recommended.
The Structure and Procedure
Observe the following in working on the term project.
a. In your report, give exact reference to all sources of your
information. In writing your report, keep facts and opinions
clearly separated. In addition, make it clear whether the opinion
is yours or someone else’s.

3. b. Use Chicago citation style for giving reference to the sources
used.
c. Use both headings and subheadings in each of the 7 segments
of your report as needed.
d. Create and use your own charts and graphs in your analyses
and report.
g. Each member of the team is responsible for all parts of the
project and should participate in all parts of the work in all
phases of the work and fully cooperate with the other team
members.
Keep track of your team members’ work on term project from
the start to the end for evaluating their work at the end. There is
peer evolution form on Blackboard that should be when the
project is completed. If a team member is not cooperating, let
me know as soon as possible so I can help resolve the issue.
Your evaluation can affect the score of your teammates.
h. Maintain an electronic folder containing all articles and data
collected for the project in the original form until you receive
the grade for the project. I may ask you to make it available to
me without any modification.
Recourses
Make use of the resources available at the CPP Library for
working on this term project.
The CPP Library has several topics under Research Tutorial
(http://www.cpp.edu/~library/reference-
instruction/tutorials/index.shtml). Make use of them.
In particular, watch the video under Using and Citing

4. Information (https://connect.cpp.edu/research101_pt5_sec0/)
before starting your data collection.
Mrs. Julie Shen, the CPP Business Librarian, has prepared a
page for our FRL 367
(http://libguides.library.cpp.edu/c.php?g=569409&p=3923815)
on the CPP Library website that has a list of relevant data bases
available on the library website. Use this resource
1
“An Antipodal Mystery” by Clyde Freeman Herreid Page 4
Part III—“This Highly Interesting Novelty”
Sir Joseph Banks, who had traveled with James Cook on his fi
greatest want here is to be acquainted with the manner in which
the Duck Bill Animal [platypus] and the
Porcupine Ant Eater [spiny echidna] which I think is of the
same genus, breed, their internal structure is
so very similar to that of Birds that I do not think it impossible
that they should lay their Eggs or at least as
Snakes and some Fish do Hatch Eggs in their Bellies.”
Th e French zoologist Etienne Geoff roy St-Hilaire, reading
Home’s anatomical works, declared that both
animals should be placed in a new animal class, the
Monotremata, which means “one hole” to designate
that the animal has a single opening (cloaca) through which it
eliminates digestive and urinary wastes
and reproductive products (eggs or sperm). Th ere were three
central questions about Ornithorhyncus that

5. emerged from the foment of the times:
cation and taxonomic schemes that had
worked so well in the Northern Hemisphere?
for the old ideas of a perfectly created world? What is
the relevance of Ornithorhyncus to the idea of evolution, which
was beginning to be whispered about?
Questions
Let’s consider the fi rst question: how should we classify such
an animal? Classifi cation experts like John Ray
and Carl von Linneaus said that reproduction was the essential
criterion for classifi cation. Linneaus set the
presence of mammary glands and the suckling of the young as
the defi ning characteristic for the class of
animals he named “Mammalia.” He said that warm-blooded
quadrupeds (four-legged beasts) with a four
chambered heart and double circulation were viviparous and
mammiferous.
Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville said mammals could be
arranged by decreasing complexity from the
primates down through the marsupials to the monotremes. He
was the fi rst to note many resemblances
between platypus and echidna and the marsupials. He said that
regardless of the apparent absence of
mammary glands, the monotremes belonged as mammals in their
own distinct order, Ornithodelphia.
France’s scientifi c leader, Georges Cuvier, pronounced they
were indeed mammals but put the monotremes
squarely in the order Edentata that included other toothless

6. mammals, anteaters, and sloths.
Not everyone agreed. Although the platypus was warm-blooded,
had a four chambered heart, and double
circulation (two diff erent sides of the heart, one pumping to the
lung and the other to the rest of the body),
birds had these traits too. And it had a duck-like bill! Everard
structure of the ear and shoulder girdle combined both
mammalian and reptilian features. Th e presence
of a cloaca was clearly a reptilian and avian feature. Th e
absence of a well-formed uterus and the apparent
absence of nipples persuaded Home that the “duck-billed mole”
was related to ovoviviparous reptiles.
Lamarck said the platypus and echidna could not be mammals
without mammary glands. He placed them
in a separate vertebrate class called Prototheria.
unusual animal? If birds, reptiles, fi shes, and
mammals are placed in separate classes, where should an animal
like Ornithoryncus be classifi ed?
is born: viviparous, oviparous, or
ovoviviparous? What seems to be the most probable
reproductive method and least probable
method? And once produced, how will they be fed?
“An Antipodal Mystery” by Clyde Freeman Herreid Page 5
Part IV—Solving the Mystery

7. breakthrough when Patrick Hill, a naval surgeon, wrote
to the Linnean Society saying he had talked to an Aboriginal
elder and “it is a fact well known to them
that the animal lays two eggs about the size, shape, and colour
of those of a hen; that the female sits for a
considerable time on the eggs in a nest which is always found
among the reeds on the surface of the water.”
Meckel reported that he had found mammary
glands in the platypus! Th ey appeared primitive and opened
directly onto the skin without any sign of
nipples. Monotremes would represent a transitional form
between reptiles and mammals. Geoff rey St-Hilaire
rejected this view and said the structures described by Meckel
couldn’t be mammary glands because the
absence of nipples would make feeding diffi cult with a duck-
bill. He stated that the monotremes belonged
in their own separate mammalian order, Monotremata.
Australia, reported to the Zoological Society of
London that he found several nests of platypus with fragments
of eggshell and in one nest he found a female
and two young. Two weeks later when the female died, he
reported: “on skinning her while yet warm, it was
observed that milk oozed through the fur on her stomach.” No
teats were visible.
Richard Owen, England’s great comparative anatomist, received
two baby platypuses from Lieutenant Maule
suckling infant’s mouth was designed to take milk in
the normal manner. In addition, he clearly determined that there
was milk in the babies’ stomachs.

8. embryologist, William Caldwell of Cambridge, arrived in
Australia and ga
Burnett River for the elusive monotremes. He
shot a platypus in the act of laying eggs: her fi rst egg had been
laid and her second was still in the partially
dilated mouth of the uterus. He claimed victory. Platypus was
oviparous. It laid soft-shelled eggs with large
yolks that were gradually absorbed by the growing young, just
as in birds and reptiles! In contrast to birds,
where the calcifi ed egg does not change in shape or size, the
monotreme egg increases in size during its time
in the uterus. Its fl exible shell is stretched as nutrients are
absorbed from the uterus.
Question
the platypus?
“An Antipodal Mystery” by Clyde Freeman Herreid Page 6
Image Credit: Ferdinand Bauer, Natural History Museum,
London.
Teaching in Science.
http://www.sciencecases.org/antipodal_mystery/antipodal_myst
ery.asp
Please see our usage guidelines, which outline our policy
concerning permissible reproduction of this work.
Part V—The Big Picture
Turning to the third question: How does the platypus fi t into
the doctrine of creation? Recall that Aristotle’s

9. view of a ladder of nature (Scala Naturae, or Great Chain of
Being) suggested that species were fi xed in a
position on an ascending ladder leading toward humans at the
top. Th is may have made sense a couple of
known, but as new species were discovered, with
more and more intermediate or hybrid characteristics, this static
view of the world seemed less and less
s;
scientifi c leader, Georges Cuvier, they had collected:
“more new creatures than all traveling naturalists of recent
times put together.” Robert Brown, who traveled
extensively around Australia’s
to science. Classifi cation schemes that had been created for
Europe were completely inadequate for the
Southern Hemisphere. Th e platypus was only one of a thousand
new riddles, albeit the most spectacular.
Another problem was emerging: fossils were being discovered
everywhere. Many were of animals no longer
alive. Th is suggested that some species had gone extinct. If
extinction occurred, then what had happened to
the ladder of life? Are there even more missing steps?
How do scientists solve this problem? Th row out the Scala
Naturae concept altogether? France’s Georges
Cuvier did. He argued physical catastrophes periodically occur
and destroy organisms. Th ey were replaced
after each disaster by successive creations of new and more
complex unrelated species. Revise it? Cuvier’s
compatriot, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, believed there was a
linear order of living organisms from simple to
complex, and that organisms could move upward on the ladder

10. via evolution—rather like an escalator. He
thought extinction was impossible.
Questions
view of the Scala Naturae. What do
you think was his view?
dence as well as that from the
traditional fi elds of comparative anatomy
and physiology. Based upon everything that you know, draw a
likely phylogenic tree showing the
evolutionary relationships among birds, marsupials,
monotremes, placental mammals, and reptiles.