ACCT7101 Accounting – Assignment
Financial Report Analysis and Business Decision Making
Due Date for Submission: 13:00 Wednesday 10 May 2023
Weight: 25% of Final Grade
Aims of this assignment
This assignment aims to develop your
a) ability to understand and analyse financial reports,
b) skills and knowledge to compare financial information of two listed companies, and
c) capacity to evaluate financial information and synthesise financial and non-financial
information to make business decisions.
This assignment is to be completed on an individual basis.
Your submitted assignment must be entirely your own work. You may seek guidance from
lecturers, tutors or fellow students to clarify concepts or the application of concepts to the
financial statements in general. In addition, please look at the “Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQs)” document uploaded on Blackboard, which may have the clarifications you need.
Advice that is clearly associated with the assignment tasks cannot be sought or provided.
Plagiarism is the submission of work or ideas which are not your own but for which academic
credit is claimed. It is important that you review the University’s policy on plagiarism. The
originality of your assignment will be assessed by the Turn-it-in system. Information from the
course profile relating to plagiarism is reproduced below.
Plagiarism
The University has adopted the following definition of plagiarism:
Plagiarism is the act of misrepresenting as one’s own original work the ideas, interpretations,
words or creative works of another. These include published and unpublished documents,
designs, music, sounds, images, photographs, computer codes and ideas gained through
working in a group. These ideas, interpretations, words or works may be found in print and/or
electronic media.
Students are encouraged to read the UQ Student Integrity and Misconduct policy
(http://ppl.app.uq.edu.au/content/3.60.04-student-integrity-and-misconduct) which makes a
comprehensive statement about the University’s approach to plagiarism, including the
approved use of plagiarism detection software, the consequences of plagiarism and the
principles associated with preventing plagiarism.
ACCT7101 Accounting Assignment
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Assignment overview
You have been randomly assigned two ASX listed companies that operate in the same
industry (Company A and Company B). See the file “Allocation of companies to students”
under the Assessment tab on Blackboard to find your companies.
Obtain each of your company’s annual reports for the 2021, 2020, and 2019 financial years
from the company’s website or www.asx.com.au. The annual reports contain the chairperson’s
report, directors’ report and financial statements (Statement of Financial Position, Statement
of Profit or Loss, Statement of Changes in Equity, Statement of Cash Flows and Notes to the
Financial Statements). The financial statements include comparative figures from the prior
year, therefore, you will have data for four financial years: 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018.
Research the financial press and other sources of available information to familiarise yourself
with the industry in which your allocated companies operate and with company specific factors
that may have or will affect either company’s performance.
Two business scenarios are described below. Scenario 1 relates to Company A only and
Scenario 2 involves Company A and Company B. Knowledge of the industry, company specific
context and their financial data will be important inputs that inform the decision that you
recommend in relation to each scenario.
Scenario 1
Company A has submitted an application to the Bank of Brisbane for a loan. The amount of
the loan is equal to 40% of total shareholders’ equity at the end of the financial year 2021. The
purpose of the loan is to fund expansion of Company A’s operating capacity. The loan term
sought is 10 years and the loan would be secured against company’s property.
Assume you are a branch lending officer of the Bank of Brisbane who assesses loan
applications. The lending officer must make a recommendation to the head office lending
manager advising whether the loan application from Company A should be accepted or
rejected.
Scenario 2
Both Company A and Company B have offered St. Lucia Investments Limited, a listed
investment company (LIC), a private placement of ordinary shares. The amount of share offer
is equal to 30% of total shareholders’ equity of each company at the end of the 2021 financial
year. St. Lucia Investments Ltd can afford either of the two private placements. The purpose
of an increase in equity for each company is to raise funds to finance an expansion of operating
capacity.
Assume you are an investment manager at St. Lucia Investments Ltd who evaluates private
equity placements. St. Lucia Investments Ltd has limited funds available for investing
decisions. The manager must make a recommendation to the board of directors advising
whether to accept Company A’s offer to sell to St. Lucia Investments a new issue of ordinary
shares and reject Company B’s offer, or accept Company B’s offer to sell to St. Lucia
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Investments a new issue of ordinary shares and reject Company A’s offer or alternatively reject
both offers.
Assignment tasks
Before commencing work on the tasks below, refer to the marking rubric for the criteria and
standards that will be applied in the assessment of your assignment. See Blackboard.
1. Company background research (8 marks)
Review Company A’s and Company B’s annual reports, articles in the financial press and
other sources of information. Write a short response to each item below to build background
knowledge of each company and their industry.
(a) Describe the operating activities of each company noting similarities and differences
between Company A and Company B.
(b) Identify two common economy wide factors and two common industry factors that could
impact on the financial performance and position of two companies. Also identify two specific
factors which could impact the financial performance and position of company A and B,
respectively. (In total, you should identify and analyse, at least, eight factors.)
2. Financial ratio analysis (8 marks)
Calculate financial statement ratios for the 2021, 2020 and 2019 years for Company A and
Company B respectively. Use the Excel template provided on Blackboard under the
Assessment tab to present the analysis in a table. Obtain data for the ratios from the financial
statements and notes to the accounts. You may add to this template (calculate additional
ratios). See further instruction in the template.
Additionally, use horizontal analysis to present the trend in sales revenue and net profit for
Company A and B respectively, assuming 2019 as the base year.
3. Lending decision (12 marks)
Write a business memorandum to the Bank of Brisbane head office loan manager from the
branch bank lending officer in Scenario 1. The memorandum must address the following points
below.
(a) Evaluate and discuss your assessment of the ability of Company A to repay the loan and
interest. Make a recommendation to accept or reject the 10-years term loan application
from Company A and justify your recommendation. Use knowledge that you have acquired in
your company research from Q1 and refer to relevant ratios calculated in Q2.
(b) Briefly discuss Company A’s net cash flows from operating, investing and financing
activities and the trends evident over the last three years. Explain how this analysis is
consistent with your accept or reject recommendation.
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(c) The use of estimates, cost, alternative accounting methods, the presence of atypical data,
and diversification of firms have been cited as factors that limit the usefulness of financial
statement analysis. In your recommendation, please discuss the limitation of your financial
statement analysis. Identify ratios and explain how one or more of the limiting factors can
affect the usefulness of that ratio.
4. Investment decision (12 marks)
Write a business memorandum to St. Lucia Investments Ltd’s board of directors from the
investment manager in Scenario 2. The memorandum must address the points below.
(a) Use the most relevant financial ratios to analyse and compare trends in profitability and
risk of Company A and Company B for the 2021, 2020 and 2019 years. Discuss your
assessment of relative profitability and risk of both companies.
(b) Recommend whether St. Lucia Investments should invest in Company A or Company B or
alternatively reject both offers. Justify the recommendation based on the Assessment of risk and
profitability of each company and other relevant background information obtained from the
annual reports and other sources. Use knowledge that you have acquired in your company
research from Q1 and refer to the relevant ratios calculated in Q2.
(c) Explain the meaning of the price earnings (PER) ratio and EPS. Describe three year trends
in these ratios for Company A and B and discuss their relevance to the investment decision.
Assignment administration
Format
Submit your work as a single PDF document. Include your student number and name as a
header to the document.
Your written responses to Assignment tasks 1, 3 & 4 are limited to a maximum of 5 pages
(Times Roman 12 point, 1.5 line spacing and minimum, 2 cm on each margin). Any submitted
text exceeding this limit will NOT be assessed.
Attach the Excel table of financial ratios for Assignment Task 2 as the 6th
, 7
th and 8th pages of
the document (excluded from page limit).
Attach a Reference List as the 9th page of the document. All sources used must be referenced
using a consistent academic reference style (e.g. Harvard Style of referencing). See
Blackboard for information on the UQBS preferred format (Writing Guide). To reference from
an annual report, use the ASX Code of the company, year of the annual report and page
number, e.g. COL 2021, p23).
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Submission
Submit your assignment before or on the due date. Follow the instructions below.
(a) Submit the assignment electronically as a PDF to the Turn-it-in link in the course
Blackboard, under the “Assessment” tab, then under “Assignment: Financial Report Analysis
and Decision Making” folder. Follow the submission instructions. The title of your assignment
in the Turn-it-in Submission Page must be the ASX code of your assigned Company A. Do
not add anything else in the title. For example, Carsales Ltd title would be: CAR.
(b) When submitting the assignment, you can test it for text matching by submitting it and
reviewing the report. Up to the due date, you can resubmit your assignment at any time (if
you make changes to it). The system simply deletes your earlier version and replaces it with
the resubmitted version.
Late submission
An assignment submitted after the due date and time for which no extension has been granted
prior to the due date will incur a late submission penalty. The penalty is applied at the rate of
5% of the total available marks for the assignment for each calendar day or part thereof that
the assignment remains overdue.
Extension of due date
Requests for granting an extension to the due dates must be made at least 24 hours prior to
the submission date. The request must contain documentation satisfactorily supporting the
request. Please refer to the ECP to understand the procedure for requesting an extension.
Assessment criteria
The criteria and standards that will be applied in the assessment of this assignment are
available on Blackboard (under the “Assessment” tab). Review the rubric before you
commence work to ensure you understand the requirements of the assessment and how it will
be assessed.
Feedback on the assessment of your assignment will be available via Turn-it-in.
This is a university assignment for the course ACCT7101 Accounting. The assignment involves analyzing the financial reports of two randomly assigned ASX-listed companies operating in the same industry. The aim is to compare the financial information of the two companies, evaluate the financial information, and synthesize financial and non-financial information to make business decisions. The assignment has two scenarios, and the knowledge of the industry, company-specific context, and their financial data will be important inputs that inform the decision recommended for each scenario. The first scenario involves assessing a loan application from Company A, while the second scenario involves evaluating private equity placements from both Company A and Company B for a listed investment company. The assignment has several tasks, including company background research, financial ratio analysis, profitability analysis, liquidity analysis, and solvency analysis. The assignment has a weight of 25% of the final grade and must be completed on an individual basis, with the originality of the assignment assessed by the Turn-it-in system. Plagiarism is prohibited, and students are encouraged to read the University’s policy on plagiarism.
