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IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FED2 - COMPANIES AND FACTORIESCOMPANY MANAGEMENTRunning a profitable factory is only half your job as an Industrialist. You are also the CEO of Newbod Inc and that involves running the actual company. You will end up with a string of factories, all of them (you hope) making money for the company. Looking at the income and expenditure figures for your factories will enable you to sell off the unprofitable ones. The company itself has income and expenditure figures, which are the true measure of how well you are doing as a CEO. The company display shows figures for income and expenditure, which is operating money coming in and out of the company as the factories buy inputs, pay workers and sell the finished product. It also shows capital income and expenditure which is the buying and selling of capital assets like factories and depots, as well as buying treasury stock (not something you need to worry about until you promote to Manufacturer). Both types of income and expenditure affect the company's working capital, that is, the number of groats it has in the bank. 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:
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. You can ignore the P/E ratio for now, because that kind of high finance doesn't become relevant until the next rank. The end of the cycle is when the greedy taxman takes his cut. The rate for Sol is a swinging 20% of the profits for the cycle. Ouch! And no, you don't get any tax rebates if you happen to make a loss. This rate applies even if you have built factories outside of Sol - since your company is registered on Earth, the taxman isn't going to let you get away with that excuse. This isn't the only time the taxman extracts money from your company. He keeps an eye on the working capital, and should it go above 1 gigagroat, any excess is removed at reset on suspicion of being illegal profits. The company display reminds you how long to go until the end of the cycle. You are not the only one that will be interested in your company reports. Financiers will be looking for companies to invest in, so they can examine your books to see how well you have been doing. If they like what they see, they may buy some shares in your company. 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. As an Industrialist, this isn't going to have much effect, but once you promote to Manufacturer the changes in share price becomes significant. 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 1,000 ig per share. Paying regular dividends keeps your shareholders happy. As an Industrialist, you don't really need to worry about that, but at sometime during your last cycle before promoting, it is a good idea to keep them sweet by issuing a divvy, so they don't cause problems while you get to grips with being a Manufacturer. If your shares turn out to be very popular, they may all get bought up by Financiers very fast, before you are able to buy any for yourself or get the company to invest in some treasury shares. Not to worry; 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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