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November 2023 – Insurers Pay The (Inflated) Cost to be The Boss
PriSim recently held a virtual Open House featuring business simulations for the insurance industry. One of the discussion topics was how hard the insurance industry has been hit by inflation. Insurance companies sometimes get a bad rap for their profitability, but inflation is adding pressure to claims expenses and increasing the cost of repairs, litigation,…
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June 2023 – SPACs Give Their Goodwill Back
Sometimes companies throw a business-related Hail Mary pass and hope for the best. But many of the pass attempts by companies that went public through the non-traditional IPO process known as SPACs (Special Purpose Acquisition Companies) in the past 2 years have landed incomplete. Including a SPAC from former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, which cost…
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May 2023 – Whatever Floats Your Business Boat…
Timing is everything – and when it comes to financial float it so happens that time actually is money.
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April 2023 – When Companies Buy Back Their Shares and Go Home
It’s never fun when a kid threatens to take their ball and go home. What about when companies do it with their shares of stock? 2023 is shaping up to be a big year for share buybacks, with more than $1 trillion in repurchases expected by the S&P 500 alone. That’s a lot of money…
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May 2022 – Spiraling Out of Control – Wages and Prices
Unless you’ve been hiding in your basement for the last couple of months (understandable if you were), you’ve probably heard about the dreaded Wage-Price Spiral (WPS) that many economists are predicting. A WPS can occur when prices rise, causing workers to demand higher wages. Companies then raise prices again to cover their now-higher wage expense…
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March 2022 – This Blog Post Is Taxing. It’s About Taxes
Economist John Maynard Keynes said that avoiding taxes was “…the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.” But in the case of book income vs. tax income, all rewarding things must come to an end. A minimum corporate tax in the US has been proposed that would be based on the book income of large…
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10K Analysis of a Real Company
Finance, the language of business, can be confusing and intimidating. We have found that exposing participants to a complex financial exercise through a business simulation enables them to become comfortable speaking this language. In addition to the simulation exercise a simple 10K analysis helps to solidify the financial concepts practiced during a business simulation. These…
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Take Heed of Financial Metrics with Lots of Letters in Them
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) is a financial metric that is commonly used to describe the “cash-generating ability” of a company. The metric has become ubiquitous as a proxy for analyzing free cash flow and is very popular in some circles. But Warren Buffett has a strong feeling about EBITDA – he…
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GDP – How to Define an Entire Country With Just One Number
Your business operates within a larger market that is described and measured using the economic indicator “GDP”, or Gross Domestic Product. The number represents the value of all products and services produced within a country’s borders. During PriSim’s simulation exercises this number is used to influence a more or less favorable business environment for the…
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A Playbook for Profits (but it might be painful)
Profits can sometimes be as elusive as a unicorn. But that elusiveness can create opportunities – even if they’re in the painful form of cost-cutting, stringent budgeting, or a merger. And woe to you if you don’t see the opportunities; there are unicorn-hunters in the world of business ready to do what you can’t or…