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ASSESSMENT BOOKLET

FNCE3000 Corporate Finance

Semester 3A, 2022

1. Overview

Assessment Schedule

Task

Participants

Value (%)

Date due

Group Assignment

Group

50

Full Assignment submission: 40%

Friday 23rd December 11.59 pm

Individual Presentation and Interview: 10%

3rd January – 20th January 2023

(During Tutorial)

Online Time Restricted Assignment

Individual

50

Exam week

The aim of these assessments is to assist you to:

· gain a deeper understanding of corporate finance concepts;

· appreciate current issues discussed/faced in the industry; and

· apply your knowledge to investigate real companies.

Through these exercises, you will gain a better understanding of how corporate finance concepts can be applied in the real world. This is an excellent opportunity for those who wish to pursue a career as a finance officer / manager.

For those who are taking this unit as an elective, it provides the foundation and tools needed to investigate the financial health of a company and assist in the decision to purchase its shares for investment.

2. Communication

If you have any queries, please try to approach your tutors first, lecturers second and unit coordinator last;

Written communication is preferred;

When sending emails to the unit coordinator, please use this format in your subject field: CF, , , ,.E.g. CF3000, Smith, John, 123456A, Bentley. The purpose of the email is written on the first line in the main body of the email. You may not receive a prompt reply if you do not follow this format.

3. Group Assignment (50%)


Objective: To prepare an analyst report on a publicly listed, dividend paying company.

Group formation: This is a group assessment. Students will form groups with maximum of 2 (two) in order to complete the group assignment. Students should complete the group sign-up form (available under the assessments tab in Bb) and return it to their lecturer by week 3. Failing to do so will attract 20% penalty. This submission must be made via Turnitin, and both the group members must sign the sign-up sheet. Only one submission per group is required. If you are unable to find a group member, you must let the unit coordinator / lecturer / tutor know by the end of week 2. It is your responsibility to form a group and allocate tasks. If you fail to find a suitable group member by week 4, you will need to complete the assignment individually. No group submission form will be accepted after Friday 23rd December 11.59 pm. Once assigned to a group it is not possible to change. You are to exchange phone numbers and relevant contact details with your group member. Moreover, you are to discuss and collaborate with your group member via a cloud platform, eg. Google docs.  The assignment will be assessed according to the rubrics and criteria provided in this document.

There are 2 parts of this assignment:

Part 1 is the full / Complete assignment submission and it is due on Friday 18th November. It must be submitted via Turnitin. It must be professionally typed; no handwritten submissions. Your work must be assessable through Turnitin. Scanned graphics will not be marked. Only your final submission will be marked. Subsequent email attachments will not be accepted. The process described in unit outline is applicable for all assessment extension request. The assignment will be marked as a complete document irrespective of who did which part. Ideally the assignment should be completed at least 2-3 days before the submission date and both the group members should read the full document and modify where needed. The whole group will be penalized for mismatch in between the sections of the assignment. Students are required to sign and attach the cover page (available on blackboard) allocating the contribution of the group members.

Part 2 is the presentation and interview, and it will be conducted during tutorial of the last 3 teaching weeks. You must attend and present in the tutorial you are enrolled in. Online students must turn their web cam on during presentation and interview. Tutorial wise presentation dates will be allocated in the alphabetical order of your surname and will be available in blackboard by the end of week 10. Each group will be allocated 4 mins (Maximum 2 min per student) for presenting the summary and findings on their analysed company. After the presentation, each student will be asked 3 questions related to the analysed company as well as various theories covered in this unit. A set of sample interview questions will be available in your Bb under the assessments tab. The purpose of this part of the assessment is to make sure each and every group member have a thorough understanding of all the 4 sections of the assignment. Moreover, as the final assessment is online and non-invigilated, basic understanding of the topics covered in the unit will be assessed.

You have to commence work towards your final submission from the end of week 4 and make considerable progress every week.

The presentation of the assignment should be in 1.5 lines spacing and 12pt font. It should not be more than 6,000 in words. The word count excludes tables, diagrams, charts, and AGLC references.

4. Group Assignment details

You are to select a publicly listed dividend paying company from the country of your study location (e.g. Singapore for the Curtin Singapore Campus) and conduct a detailed analysis on it.

Please go through the checklist at the bottom of this page before you commence your assignment.

Singapore based students must AVOID selecting companies listed on SGX which are in the financial sector. Check the following url for information:

https://sginvestors.io/sgx/stock-listing/sector/financials

If you are unsure, please check with your tutor/lecturer during tutorial / lecture / consultation hours.

The purpose of this assignment is to use your acquired knowledge from this unit to investigate the financial strength of a public listed company. Your research should cover the following 4 parts:

· Shareholder analysis (15%) – Who are the owners of the company and the implication to the choice of methods used to calculate the cost of return.

· Risk-return analysis (15%) – Analyse the return received over the market for the apparent risks identified in the company.

· Cost of capital (40%) – Calculate the cost of capital using various methods and analyse your findings.

· Financial statement analysis (30%) – Determine the future of the company by analysing the performance of the company.

In each of these parts, you are to report your findings using the format provided below. If the information is not from the company’s annual report, you will have to provide details on

· where you sourced the information; and

· comment on how you have verified its reliability.

If the information is from the annual report, you do not need to reference, but you have to include the page number of the annual report from which the information has been taken from, for example: (pg XX).

The assignment must be written completely by you and your group members. You are not to purchase or reproduce commercial stock reports.

5. Refinitiv (Thomson Reuters) Workspace

This is a web-based database that are extensively used in the industry and will add value if you could develop some expertise in using it.

6. Group Assignment Requirement

Before you start: Do not choose the company unless it satisfies the following, otherwise you will get a 30% penalty.

1

Dividend paying: Check if the company has been paying dividends for the last 2 years and has been listed for more than 5 years

2

Annual report: Check what is the latest available annual report. You must use the latest report that has been released before 25th September 2022.

3

Reporting currency: Check that the company reports in local currency (SGD for SGX listed company). Look at the financial statements to verify.

4

Borrowings: Your company must have long term (non- current) borrowings for CAPEX. These are usually loans, bonds, notes or leases. Ignore accounts or trade payables, deferred tax or claim liabilities, provisions and employer entitlements and derivatives.

5

Earnings per share: Make sure that your company does not have a negative earnings per share.

6

Referencing:

· Use referencing sparingly. More reference means less critical assessment. You are not awarded marks for putting forth opinions of others.

· AGLC (Footnote) referencing is required.

· Referencing must be consistent (5% penalty).

· Do not reference material from textbooks and lecture slides.

· Do not include definitions or theory.

· If the information is from the annual report, do not reference; instead include the page number of the annual report from which the information has been taken from.

· Do not quote from the annual report, journal articles, textbook and lecture slide or provide formulas and definitions to equations; just show your workings.

· Appendices without intext page number reference will not be looked at.

· Do not reference from stockbroking or investment companies/website/articles; including but not limited to Simply Wall Street, Intelligent investor, Investsmart, Motley Fool, investing.com, Investopedia, etc.

Assignment format template. The headings below are the headings of your assignment.

1. Shareholder analysis guide:

1.1

Summary of the business

· Short description of the main operations of the business and the services or products that they offer

· Describe what is the business’ main profit source

· If they have multiple revenue sources, investigate, and summarise them

· Summarise in table or diagrams

· DO NOT reproduce material from website or annual reports

1.2

Chairman/Director’s message

Assessing the tone of the message, determine the potential target audience

· Compare chairman’s message with 3 other companies (not in the same industry or sector)

1.3

Profile of an investor of the company

Describe who would be a typical investor of your chosen company in terms of

· income vs capital growth

· long vs short term

· informed vs uninformed

In your assessment, make comparisons to 3 companies (in other sectors) to substantiate your reasoning. For example, if you think the investor is looking for dividend income, the company must be paying substantially more than other companies.

Use graphs and charts to illustrate.

1.4

Identify non-marginal investors

To assess a company, we need to consider the future cash flow of the business; its sustainability and profitability. This is an important element of the analysis work. However, future cash flows must be discounted using the appropriate rate.

CAPM is often used as an approximation for the rate. However, when there is a significantly high percentage of non-marginal investors, other methods must be employed. In this assignment, we are only going to compare CAPM with DGM.

Your investigation into the type of investors of your company will assist in determining whether CAPM should be relied upon.

Focus your attention on identifying non-marginal investors; founders, insiders, directors, related companies like suppliers. Provide evidence of your research. Individual names, family trusts, private companies (mostly), share plans and DRPs are all non-marginals. When there is a high percentage of non-marginal investors, other calculation methods (such as DGM) must be considered on top of CAPM. No marks are awarded for identifying marginal investors.

Nominees, custodians, banks and investment companies are all marginal investors; ignore them.

Make sure you create a table listing the percentage of marginal vs non-marginal and then discuss.

% of Marginal

% of Non-marginal

Top 20 shareholders

Remaining shareholders

State clearly your assumptions of investors outside the top 20.

2. Risk-return analysis guide

2.1

Review and Evidence of listed risks

In this section, you need to review the risks listed in the annual report. Avoid making up your own risks. We are after external risks. Investment decisions, financing decisions, credit, health and safety, compliance and human resource management are all internal risks; ignore them.

Competition is not a risk, it is the reason the company is in business.

Climate change is not a risk, unless the company’s product and service are directly and significantly influenced by the climate change.

Do not discuss Covid as a risk as there other factors that must be considered, such as government assistance and support, reduction of competitors, difference in state border restrictions, etc.

Identifying the risk is only part of the story. You have to now show evidence of the risk and explain why your company is more susceptible to that risk than other companies. The evidence that you provide are for the risks identified in the previous section. You must have evidence and explanation for each of the risks identified. No marks are awarded for risks that are identified without clearly showing evidence that they have impacted the company.

This can be done in a few ways; relevant newspaper articles, correlation with identified variables, trend analysis, and comparison with competitors, etc.

Share price decrease can be visual way to show the impact of the risk in the past.

Discuss at least 3 external risks pertaining to the normal running of the business.

Do not address the steps taken by the company to address or reduce the risks.

Please take time to investigate and document your findings.