IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FED2
COMPANY MANAGEMENT FOR MANUFACTURERS
KEEPING THE SHAREHOLDERS HAPPY
As a Manufacturer, your honeymoon period as a new CEO is over, and the shareholders expect results. If you don't perform to their satisfaction, they will be unhappy and if their disaffection gets too great, they will revolt and sell off the company's assets, using the resulting cash to pay out a dividend!
Unlike businesses, companies have to issue detailed accounts so the shareholders can keep an eye on what you're up to. Companies run on accounting cycles which last 7 days. At the end of the cycle, the accounts for the cycle are calculated - you can see them with 'DI ACCOUNTS', and they look something like this:
Newbod Enterprises Accounts - Cycle Number 5
Share value: 1580ig (+80)
A total of 10000 shares have been issued
Assets: 26Mig (+50Kig)* Dividend: 1ig
Cash: 47Mig (+28Mig)
Income: 152Mig Expenditure: 107Mig
Profit: 44Mig (+3Mig)
Price-Earnings (P/E) ratio is 0
Price-Dividend (P/D) ratio is 1580
Earnings-Dividend (E/D) ratio is 4467
*All assets valued at nominal sale prices.
The figures in brackets show the change in value for that entry from the previous cycle.
Assets is the value of all the depots and factories, valued at the price you would get if you sold them. Cash is the working capital. Income and Expenditure are the operational figures - capital income and expenditure are not included because they are counted in the assets. Profit is also the operating profit, and is pre-tax.
Financiers can now buy shares in your company without your approval, and they will examine your books to see how well you have been doing. If they like what they see, they may invest. These shares will come from the broker, so the total number of shares will remain the same. The company display shows who owns the shares. If you are online at the time somebody purchases shares in your company, you will be told about it.
Investors trading in your shares is going to have an effect on the share price. When Financiers buy shares, it will make the price rise; when they sell them, it will make the price fall.
Assuming your factories are humming away and producing lots of valuable goods, and your company is making a profit on them, you may want to issue a dividend - a payment to all the shareholders in the company. This is one way to reward yourself for all your hard work as a CEO. The command is 'ISSUE DIVIDEND amount', where 'amount' is the amount per share you want to give. The company always has 10,000 shares, so if you issue a dividend of 100, the company will pay out 1,000,000 ig to the shareholders. Since you only own 500 shares, you would get 50,000 ig of that payout - the rest goes to the broker and to Financiers who have bought shares in your company. There is an upper limit on dividends of 2,000 ig per share, and you can only issue two divvies per day.
Paying regular dividends keeps your shareholders happy. It's a good idea to issue a divvy at some point during your first cycle, to keep them sweet while you get to grips with being a Manufacturer.
If your shares turn out to be very popular, you can split the shares so that the company has twice the number, each of them at half the value. If you have 10,000 shares valued at 4ig each, then splitting the stock will give you 20,000 shares at 2ig each.
The command is 'SPLIT STOCK'. You have to pay the brokers a commission of 5,000ig - after all, they have to do the paperwork for you. You can only split the stock four times, giving you a total of 160,000 shares, and the share price cannot go below 2ig a share.
Splitting your stock does have an effect on the running of your company, and you shouldn't do it without thinking through the implications, particularly the timing of the split in terms of where you are in a cycle. You will benefit greatly by talking to other, more experienced CEOs and asking their advice.
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