Assignment

Background:

Financial literacy helps you to become a better manager. Understanding the financial side of the business will make you more effective on the job and will make your work life more meaningful. The two core activities of financial management are to manage profitability and manage liquidity. If either of these two activities is neglected it can lead to the demise of an organisation. Hence, these two aspects guide the decision making for any manager. Issuing bonds (debt) and/or issuing stocks (shares), enables the corporation to manage the money it needs to finance the assets of the business. Therefore, being able to value these financial securities is also an important skill to have.

Requirement:

Your task is to analyse the historical (for the last three years) performance of a listed company and present your findings in the form of a report, which will cover both qualitative and quantitative performance elements in a logical cohesive format.

Please note: If you are working for a company listed on the stock exchange, use this opportunity to complete the exercise on that company. Otherwise, feel free to value a competitor or a company that interests you. However, note that the company you select must be listed on a stock exchange and have a history of paying dividends.

The qualitative component of your discussion should include brief background information on the company including how they are placed within the industry, and a brief overview of the recent stock price movements for the company. The quantitative component should include an analysis of the following important ratios measuring liquidity, profitability, capital structure and market-value aspects of the company performance:
- liquidity: current ratio
- profitability: net profit margin ratio and Return on total assets
- capital structure: debt ratio and Interest cover ratio
- market value: price-earning (P/E) ratio.

Your analysis should highlight the important changes within these ratios over this period and identify the reasons for significant changes. Since these financial ratios are limited to the particular organisation, it is also useful to compare these ratios to other businesses in the same industry or by using industry averages.

You are also required to calculate the value of a stock (share) of the listed company selected above, using the Constant Dividend Growth Rate model. Go to your relevant stock exchange site (e.g. www.asx.com.au if using an Australian listed company) and find the latest share price. Assume the company chosen above has a 6% dividend growth rate and the required rate of return is 10%. Compare that stock value with the current stock market price. Are there any differences? You are required to explain these differences.

Financial Management Subject Outline

Analyse and interpret the ratios and the other data with reference to the theoretical concepts introduced in this subject to evaluate the company's operations and performance. Discuss limitations of this analysis if any. Taking into account the quantitative and qualitative analysis, you are then required to make a recommendation on whether to:

- Invest in the company.
- Do not invest in the company.

Please note: In order to start this assignment you will need to extract the financial statements (comprising three years information) of your chosen publicly listed company.

We recommend you familiarise yourself with the IBISWorld database available under the ‘Library' drop-down menu in the header on the student learning portal or from the internet (https://finance.yahoo.com/). These tools provide the financials, financial ratios and other company information plus industry averages for a broad range of companies.

Include referencing so that you clearly acknowledge your sources of information. All your references must be from credible sources such as books, peer-reviewed journals, magazines, company documents and recent articles. Students are highly encouraged to use peer-reviewed journal articles as this may contribute towards a higher grade. Your assignment mark will be adversely affected if you use poor references.

Please note: Remember to submit a hyperlink to the annual reports within the reference list in your assignment.

Important assignment instructions

The required word length for this assignment is 2500 words (plus or minus 10%).
- Your assignment will be marked according to the criteria outlined in the assessment grading criteria (see Appendix 1).
- In terms of structure, presentation and style you are normally required to use:
o AIB standard report format
o AIB preferred Microsoft Word settings
o author-date style referencing (which includes in-text citations plus a reference list).

These requirements are detailed in the AIB Style Guide.

- Reference lists for AIB assignments normally contain the following number of relevant references from different sources: 6-12 (for MBA assignments).

- All references must be from credible sources such as books, industry related journals, magazines, company documents and recent academic articles.

- Your grade will be adversely affected if your assignment contains no/poor citations and/or reference list and if your assignment word length is beyond the allowed tolerance level (see Assessment Policy available on AIB website).