Nortel Networks Corporation - 2000 Annual Report

A business school student, who was also a shareholder of Nortel Networks Corporation, sat down to examine Nortel's recently released 2000 annual report. The dramatic fluctuations in Nortel's share price over the past year had caused investors in Nortel's stock to both make and lose a lot of money. The young investor was trying to decide whether she, as a shareholder, felt misled about Nortel's company worth and valuation. She wanted to look at investors' valuation of Nortel and the amount of disclosure given by Nortel management. Examining the available data, she realized that the choice of an appropriate and comparable performance measure was complicated by industry practices and by the particular nature of Nortel's business. Her challenge was to pick one standard performance measure to use in her analyses for future investment decisions regarding Nortel and other telecommunications companies.