PART TWO – 70%
This part of assignment can be completed individually or in a group of no more than 2 students.
I.
Assignment Context:
You have recently joined Business Smart, a finance and business consultation firm. Your manager Mr. James Brown will take family leave. He has asked you to prepare a consultation report for an important client,
Company A, before he returns on 20 April, 2018.
Company
A is an energy company utilising national and global resources to provide a variety of energy solutions. It has recently announced the appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer. Before the arrival of the new CEO,
Company A
decides to conduct a comprehensive review of the company’s financial performance and risk in the past year, and in particular, to better understand how its financial performance is benchmarked against other rivals with similar profiles in the Energy sector. Based on this review, financial records can be accurately prepared and any issue regarding business performance can be identified.
Company A
considers this review very important and timely in assisting the incoming CEO to set out new plans for its future performance development.
In addition,
Company A
has been under public scrutiny recently because of its high carbon emissions and energy consumption. As a response, several board members are discussing improving the company’s reporting on environmental challenges and strategies for environmental protection. However, a few other board members are concerned about the risk associated with lifting such reporting. They argue that the company should focus on the main business areas and regaining profit. The issue is pending for the new CEO to resolve.
II.
Required:
1. Select
Company A
and
a benchmarking company
for analysis. You need to choose two companies from a list of
Selected ASX Listed Energy Companies
provided as a separate file under Assignment on the course website.
(1) The name of the company selected as
Company A
should begin with the same letter of the alphabet as your surname (or your fellow student’s surname should you do the assignment in pairs), e.g. if your surname is
Alpha, you can use
A
cacia Coal Ltd
or
A
DX Energy Ltd.
(2) The name of the company selected as the
benchmarking company
should begin with the same letter of the alphabet as your first name (or your fellow student’s first name should you do the assignment in pair), e.g. if your first name is
Beta, you can use
B
each Energy Ltd
or
B
erkeley Energy Ltd.
Note: If you cannot find an appropriate company to analyse, you may randomly select a company from the list but you need to clearly justify the reason in your assignment.
2. Go to the company information database
DatAnalysis Premium
via the UniSA Library website. Under
Company Reports, search for the companies you selected according to their ASX Codes or part of the company names. Go to
Financial Data
to review these companies’ financial statements and ratios for the financial year 2016-17.
3. Based on available data, analyse and compare the financial results of
Company A
and the
benchmarking company
selected. Your comparative analysis should cover the following points:
(1) Which company is more profitable and generates healthier returns?
(2) How well are the two companies managing their resources? Do you think
Company A
is efficient in managing its assets compared with the
benchmarking company?
(3) Can
Company A
meet its short term debts? How is its liquidity compared with the
benchmarking company?
(4) Do you think
Company A
will stay in operation in the long term? How is its long term financial stability compared with the
benchmarking company?
Your answer to each question should be supported by adequate evidence (i.e. financial statement data and ratio results) and analysis.
4. Go to
Annual Reports
to review the most recent report of
Company A
and the
benchmarking company. Are there any non-financial issues reported? Are they of concern and having a potential impact on the company’s financial position and performance? Discuss how these additional issues and evidence disclosed in the annual reports may influence your previous comparative results.
5. Does the
benchmarking company
produce any report or information about environmental issues such as environmental pollution and energy consumption? Do you think
Company A
should follow what the
benchmarking company
is doing? Do you support reporting on environmental strategies and challenges or do you think the company should focus on business growth and regaining profit instead? Explain.
III.
Submission Notes:
• Your consultation report must be presented in a clear format, including a brief introduction and conclusion, and with correct grammar, expression and in-text referencing. Read the
Writing Reports Guide
on the course Learnonline website before submission.
• This part of the assignment must be submitted online. Hard copies are NOT accepted. If the assignment is completed by two students, only
one
student needs to make the submission.
• Please submit
one
single
Word Document
only. Please do not attach the assignment cover sheet. Instead, clearly indicate your
name
and
student ID
(if applicable,
plus
your fellow student’s name and ID) on the first page of the submission. This is to avoid high similarity of the assignment cover sheets reported in
Turnitin.
• The word limit for this part of assignment is
2000 words
(excluding references and appendices). This will be strictly applied. So check your word count before submission.
• You are required to use the Harvard Referencing style. The minimum number of references for this assignment is
three
(excluding the textbook and reference to annual reports). In professional business reports, your references used have to be based on proper academic sources (books, book chapters, journal articles, etc.). Internet sources such as Wikipedia or Investopedia, are deemed to be unacceptable. If you are not sure about the referencing style, please read the
Referencing
guide on the course Learnonline website.
• You may ask your lecturer/tutor for help while completing this assignment, but they will only answer general questions and will not ‘check’ student answers to the assignment. You may only discuss the assignment with other students at a
general or conceptual level, that is, you may talk about the issues, not the details.
• You should not prepare your assignment together with other students or groups, nor should you compare your final answers with other students or groups. It is
NOT
acceptable to share files, templates, or electronic versions of assignment questions with other students or groups. To ensure
Academic Integrity, all submissions will be checked through
Turnitin
databases which include online publications, internet resources and past student submissions.
• Remember, your assignment must be all
your own work. If you present material that is not all your own work you have engaged in
academic dishonesty
which is taken very seriously and dealt with very severely. Refer to the Academic Integrity section of the Learnonline course website.