EPS
$4.66
vs $4.25 expected · beat
Industry 100 · GMS200-051 · read live 12 Nov 2026
Every change the company needs, and why. Read off the decision screens, all seven journal pages, the competitive intelligence reports and the operating reports.
Fix this first
G Company sold North American cameras at $226 in Year 8, which was 19% below the industry average. The Year 9 entry reads $337. Nothing was added to justify it: still one model, still the joint-lowest advertising budget in the industry, still a 60 day warranty against a market at 170.
The projection screen forecasts North American share falling from 12.3% to 6.6% as a result.
You are over-earning and under-investing. Four of the five scored measures beat expectation. Image rating is the only miss, and it has fallen every year the company has been run.
Why the next three years carry most of the score
The five measures are worth 20 points each, but they are not scored the same way. Two of them throw away your entire history.
| Measure | Scored on | Still winnable |
|---|---|---|
| Stock price | most recent year only | all 20 |
| Credit rating | most recent year only | all 20 |
| Image rating | average of last three years | all 20 |
| EPS | weighted average of every year | partly locked |
| ROE | weighted average of every year | partly locked |
Sixty of the hundred points reset to Years 9, 10 and 11. That is the entire argument for spending heavily now and accepting a weaker Year 9 profit.
Your score splits two ways. Against investor expectations you sit on 105, which is respectable. Against the best firm in the industry you sit on 63. D Company is on 99. That second number is where your 84 comes from.
Measure by measure in Year 8, your Best-In-Industry marks were EPS 8, stock price 7, ROE 12, image 18, credit rating 19. Relative to the field you are not actually losing on image or credit. You are losing on the money.
What the sim itself says is wrong
The Strengths and Weaknesses page flags the same block red in all four regions and in both products: number of models, retailer support, advertising, website displays, sales promotions, search engine ads and retailer recruitment. Every one of those is a marketing spend decision.
Price and P/Q rating come back green almost everywhere. You were competitive on price and better than the field on quality. Which is exactly why the $337 entry is the wrong move: it converts the company's one consistent strength into a weakness without fixing a single weakness.
Ordered by how much each one moves the score.
Those figures come from the Competitive Assumptions boxes at the bottom of each marketing screen. They are last year's actual regional averages, pre-filled as an editable default, and nobody on your team has changed them. The help file says rivals' efforts will be "somewhat stronger than the previous year" and lists seven reasons why.
Treat every target here as a floor, not a bullseye. North American advertising has gone 2,500, 3,438, 4,588, 5,568 over four years, about 21% a year. Year 9 is realistically 6,300 to 6,700.
| North America, cameras | Y8 actual | Y9 entry | Industry Y9 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your price | $226 | $337 | $279 |
| Position vs market | 19% below | 21% above | — |
| Share | 12.3% | 6.6% proj. | — |
Why it mattersWhoever typed $337 was solving a real problem. In Year 8 you earned $35.59 of operating profit per camera in North America against an industry average of $63.86 and a high of $117.06. You were the thinnest margin in the region. The instinct to raise price was right. The size of the step is what breaks it, because a 49% rise with no extra models, advertising or warranty just hands your buyers to someone else.
The other three regions are already near market and can stay roughly where they are: Europe-Africa $288 against $287, Asia-Pacific $285 against $278, Latin America $271 against $266.
The publisher's help file adds that "the buyers of action cameras in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific regions are more sensitive to cross-brand price differences than are camera buyers in North America and Europe-Africa." Your team picked the right region to try a premium in. They just took too big a step.
All six initiatives read No or zero for Years 4 through 8. The industry averaged $8,060k of outlay last year and the top spender put in $16,423k.
| Image points awarded for CSR | Year 6 | Year 7 | Year 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industry high | 5 | 8 | 12 |
| Industry average | 3 | 5 | 7 |
| G Company | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Why it mattersImage is your only failing measure and it is scored across Y9 to Y11, which is exactly the window you have left. The average company collected 7 image points from citizenship last year and you collected none. Your image was 69. Seventy-six would have cleared the Year 8 bar.
The page states that five years of sustained effort lifts image 15 to 20 points. You have three years, so expect roughly half of that. The benefit also compounds, which is why the industry high climbed 5, then 8, then 12. Starting tonight rather than next year is worth more than the money involved.
The gains are "minimal unless your company's actions are comprehensive, entail more than token efforts, and represent an ongoing effort of at least 4-5 years." You have three. The same file says a strong image "can be achieved by performing well on just the first two factors", P/Q and market share, with no spending here at all. That is why this dropped to second behind the price fix.
A realistic target, calibrated on your own industry rather than the brochure: the average Industry 100 company spent $8,060k in Year 8 and earned 7 image points, having started around Year 6. Three years of average spending, about seven points. Still worth having when your image is 66 against a 77 bar.
| Warranty, days | Cameras | Industry | Drones | Industry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North America | 60 | 170 | 90 | 160 |
| Europe-Africa | 120 | 160 | 60 | 130 |
| Asia-Pacific | 180 | 160 | 60 | 150 |
| Latin America | 60 | 130 | 60 | 140 |
Why it mattersYour warranty claim rate is 6.9% against an industry average of 19.8%, the best in Industry 100. Repair cost runs $3.43 a unit against an average of $9.93. A longer warranty therefore costs you roughly a third of what it costs a rival, while buying the same amount of buyer confidence. It is also the easiest way to justify charging more.
The Strengths and Weaknesses page shows warranty as a green strength. That is because its legend scores price, production cost and warranty inverted, where below average counts as a strength. The green means your warranty is short and therefore cheap, not that it is helping you sell.
The anticipated industry average is 4.1 camera models and 2.4 drone models. You run exactly one of each. In Year 8 you had one camera model against an industry 3.5, which the sim flagged as 71% below average and a weakness in all four regions. A Company runs seven.
Why it mattersNumber of models is a direct buyer-appeal variable in its own right, separate from price and P/Q. One model means you compete for one slice of the market and give retailers one reason to stock you. It also feeds image rating.
| Camera advertising | You | Industry avg | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| North America | $3,000k | $5,568k | −46% |
| Europe-Africa | $1,500k | $3,646k | −59% |
| Asia-Pacific | $1,000k | $2,988k | −67% |
| Latin America | $500k | $2,556k | −80% |
Why it mattersThe worst single gap in the company is on the drone side: search engine advertising of $1,490k against an industry average of $4,724k, 68.5% under. H Company spends $10,000k. That is on the half of the business that is actually growing, where your share is rising in all four regions.
Website display budgets are under the industry in all four regions too, and your sales promotions run one week at 10% against an industry three to four weeks at 15%.
| Support per unit | You | Industry avg |
|---|---|---|
| North America | $10.45 | $9.20 |
| Europe-Africa | $6.93 | $10.30 |
| Asia-Pacific | $6.00 | $10.80 |
| Latin America | $6.80 | $11.30 |
Why it mattersRetailers are walking away. Local shops carrying your cameras have gone 3,360 to 2,880 in North America and 2,150 to 1,615 in Asia-Pacific. Online drone retailers have dropped from 34 to 28. Distribution is slower to rebuild than price is to cut, so this one compounds against you the longer it is left.
Drone share is rising in every region: North America 9.2 to 9.6%, Europe-Africa 16.5 to 18.9%, Asia-Pacific 14.4 to 16.7%, Latin America 11.4 to 13.1%.
| Drone price | You | Industry avg | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| North America | $1,600 | $1,455 | 10% too high |
| Europe-Africa | $999 | $1,383 | 28% too low |
| Asia-Pacific | $999 | $1,298 | 23% too low |
| Latin America | $1,001 | $1,198 | 16% too low |
Why it mattersYou are winning share in three regions while charging a quarter less than the field. That is margin you are giving away for share you already have. The extra profit is what funds the camera price cut and the citizenship spend, so this change pays for changes one and two.
No dividend has ever been paid. The Year 8 dividend was $0.00. There has been no share repurchase and no early loan repayment. Cash available from all sources this year is $601M.
| Stock price | You | Expectation | Best in industry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 8 | $71.29 | $60.00 | $217.45 (D) |
| Year 9 | — | $100.00 | — |
| Year 11 | — | $200.00 | — |
Why it mattersThis is your widest single gap and simultaneously your most recoverable, because nothing before Year 11 counts toward it. Dividends and buybacks both lift stock price directly, and a buyback also raises EPS by shrinking the share count. Idle cash meanwhile drags ROE, which is one of the two measures you are still winning.
| Per worker, per year | Cameras | Drones | Industry avg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total compensation | $26,488 | $28,401 | $28,348 / $30,644 |
| Quality incentive | $1,537 | $2,045 | $2,717 / $3,032 |
| Productivity training | $1,250 | $9,000 | — |
| PAT productivity | 3,053 | 1,655 | 3,240 (cameras) |
Why it mattersDrone workers get the maximum $9,000 of productivity training. Camera workers get $1,250. The camera quality incentive is barely half the industry rate. The result shows up downstream: camera labour cost is $35.35 per unit against an industry average of $31.24, second worst in Industry 100, on below-average productivity. Underpaying the camera line is costing you more per unit than paying properly would.
| Cameras | Low | Average | High | You |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 8 R&D ($000s) | 0 | 23,000 | 50,000 | 16,000 |
| Cumulative R&D | 51,000 | 120,250 | 185,000 | 109,000 |
| Component cost per unit | 24.35 | 78.21 | 101.55 | 83.89 |
Why it mattersYou spend less than the field on R&D and more than the field on components. R&D is what lets you hit a given P/Q rating with cheaper parts, so under-spending here is why your bill of materials is above average despite a mid-range product.
| Bull's Eye, Year 8 | Forecast | Actual | Variance | Pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenues (within 5%) | 481,336 | 462,744 | −3.9% | yes |
| EPS (within 5% or 10¢) | $3.04 | $2.74 | −9.9% | no |
| Image (within 4 points) | 70 | 69 | −1 pt | yes |
Why it mattersTwo of three passed. EPS alone cost the point, by 30 cents. You have zero cumulative Bull's Eye awards while A and E have two each and D and F have one. Fifth place on the scoreboard is four points away, so bonus points are not a rounding error here. Your Year 7 forecast variance was 0%, so the skill is already in the room.
Leap Frog gives a point to the most improved current-year score. A Company took it in Year 8 with +28 after a bad Year 7. Your current-year score has gone 73, then 87, then 82, which puts you in exactly the position A was in. A genuine Year 9 turnaround is a live candidate.
The Corporate Responsibility Award begins this year, for the highest citizenship outlay as a share of revenue. You currently spend $0, so every rival starts ahead, but nobody has won it yet and change one already puts you in the running.
All of this reduces Year 9 profit. That is the point, not a side effect. You are converting a surplus you do not get scored twice for into image, share and distribution that you do.
Everything here turns on reading one column of the competitive intelligence table as G Company. Four independent checks agree: the price row works out to exactly −19.0% of the $279 average; the advertising row in that column reads 3,000, matching your own Year 9 entry; the website row reads 1,500, also matching your entry; and the multi-store chains row reads 42, which is what the AC Camera Segment report separately states for the end of Year 8. The last one is the strongest, because it is a different report generated independently.
The report is due 3 December, 11:59 PM, one PDF to the D2L dropbox. The simulation's final year lands 26 November. That is seven days to assemble.