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ACC70104 MANAGING DECISIONS

Assessment Task 2: Group Assignment (25%)

COMPANY FINANCIAL ANALYSIS

Working in a group of up to 5 students, you are required to choose and work on a publicly listed company in the financial sector in Malaysia. Each group will indicate the section of the work done by individual student, and 40% of the marks will be awarded accordingly. The remaining 60% will be awarded based on the quality and cohesiveness of the whole report.

Submission due date: 20 May 2023

1) The task

Your client has approached you for investment advice on a public company listed on Bursa Malaysia. You are to identify key financial issues regarding the business situation and performance of the company in the last three years with the aim of coming up with recommendations to your client. The report must include horizontal and vertical financial analysis with a summary of relevant ratios in the last three years. Prepare graphs of trends where applicable.

To have a clear view of the business situation, you need to evaluate the company’s recent past, current performance and future outlook through processing information contained in company annual reports, the company website, analyst reports, and other business media. Where you are using financial data or information from the literature in your argument, cite the document and page number of the source, and these sources must be acknowledged using APA referencing.

2) Report format:

· Suggested format of your report:

o Brief background of the company

o Analysis of the economic, industrial and business environment with an explanation of strategic implications to company. You are required to adopt a minimum of 2 frameworks (PESTLE, SWOT, 5-Forces etc) for the analysis.

o Financial analysis: horizontal, vertical, and ratio analysis. Analysis must include comparisons with industry averages or a competitor.

o Findings and recommendations from the financial analysis for your client.

o References: A reference list must be attached with the assignment with at least 10 references. Sources of articles obtain from dubious websites (e.g. Wikipedia, blogs, Tutor’s website, Answers.com, UK essays, Slideshare.net) are not recognised as references.

o Appendices: You may include the detail financial statements of the company, or detail explanations of analytical frameworks (SWOT, PESTLE, 5 Forces etc) in this section

· The word limit is 4000 words. The main body of your report should have a minimum size 12 font, 1.5 line spacing and 2.5cm margins on all sides.

· Referencing: Students must fully acknowledge the sources of information (books, articles, reports, etc.) that are used in the completion of assignment. This can be done by adopting the APA Referencing System which demonstrates (a) how to acknowledge sources in the report body, and (b) how to prepare the list of references.

· Learning Objectives of the Assignment:

o    MLO1: Understand general purpose financial statements and International Financial Reporting Standards, and be able to apply the knowledge through financial statement analysis

1. To apply the concepts of financial accounting to the actual financial reports of a business.

2. To develop skills in calculating and interpreting financial ratios, as a means of assessing a firm’s financial performance.

3. To develop ability to locate relevant information for analysis purpose.

3) You are required to submit the assignment to Turnitin before the due date.

· The assignment/s should not exceed 20% in the overall similarity index, which excludes bibliographies and references, with no more than 5% similarity from each individual source. If this similarity is not fulfilled, the module leader will provide adequate justifications and send the assignments to the Academic Integrity Officer for examination.

· You can check as many times as possible and amend accordingly to ensure that duplication is absolutely minimum (Note: the new Turnitin report will be obtained after 24 hours of re-submission).  A copy of the ‘Turnitin’ report is to be attached to the assignment for submission.

· The penalty for Turnitin similarities:

i. Should similarity index fall between 20% and 25%, 5 marks will be deducted;

ii. Should similarity index fall between 25% and 30%, 10 marks will be deducted;

iii. Should similarity index exceed 30%, the heaviest penalty could be zero mark, which is at the discretion of the module leader and/or Taylor’s Business School.

4) Submission of Assignment

Students are expected to present a paper of professional quality.  Prior to submission of the assignment, students are to ensure that all aspects of the requirements have been addressed, and that there are no spelling and grammatical errors.  Students also required to submit the completed assignment to Turnitin.

5) Late submission of assignment

Assignments submitted within 24 hours after the published deadline will be penalised as below:

a) A mark of more than 50% for the assignment will be reduced to 50%. This reduced mark will be used in the calculation of the overall module mark;

b) A mark of 50% or less will stand and be used in the calculation of the overall module mark.

Assignments will not be accepted after the 24 hour window and will be recorded as a non- submission. A mark of ZERO will be awarded. Please see the section on Non-Submission of Assignment below for more details.

6) Extension of Deadline

No extension of deadline will granted for the assignment, except in the case of extenuating circumstances. Please refer to the section on Extenuating Circumstances below should you like to request for consideration of extenuating circumstances. Students, whose application for extenuating circumstances is accepted, will not receive their marks, when the other students who submitted on time receive theirs.

7) Non-Submission of Assignment

Students who do not submit their assignment will be deemed to have forfeited their right to a second attempt (resit) of the module. These students will be required to repeat the module with attendance and undertake all assessments again (as their third attempt (repeat)).

8) Extenuating circumstances

Extenuating circumstances are circumstances which are unforeseen, unexpected, significantly disruptive and beyond a student’s control. The circumstances must relate to a specific piece of assessment or examination rather than being problems of a kind that affect a year as a whole or parts of it.

A student who is of the opinion that:

· his or her performance in an examination or in other assessed work has been adversely affected by an extenuating circumstance(s), or

· his or her ability to attend an examination has been adversely affected by an extenuating circumstance(s)

could submit an Extenuating Circumstances Form to the Examinations Centre at Taylor’s University. The form must be accompanied by supporting documentary evidence. Acceptance of extenuating circumstances shall be evaluated on a case to case basis by an Extenuating Circumstances Panel. The decision of the Panel shall be deemed as final.

Circumstances that are unlikely to be accepted as extenuating circumstances include the following:

· personal illness or disability for which special arrangements are already in place.

· colds or know conditions such as hay fever.

· normal examination stress or anxiety experienced during revision or the assessment period (unless corroborated by medical evidence as a chronic condition and undergoing treatment).

· non serious domestic or personal disruptions (eg moving house, change of job, holidays, weddings, normal job pressure, failed travel arrangements, financial difficulties, oversleeping).

· study related circumstances (equipment failure including computing/printer difficulties (unless they occur in the examination itself), failure to have taken back up copies for work stolen or corrupted, bunching of deadlines/examinations, missing books, poor time management, misreading the examination timetable, taking the wrong examination).

(Note: The above list is not exhaustive).

9) Assessment Offences

· Referencing and Plagiarism

You are to use the APA referencing styles consistently for all written assessments. Taylor’s University treats any acts of dishonesty relating to assessment of University modules very seriously. It is vital that students acquaint themselves with the University’s policy on assessment offences. Assessment Offences is defined here as passing off the work of others as one’s own including copying (reproducing or imitating), cheating, collusion (agreement to deceive, using words or ideas of colleagues or other students and passing them off as your own), plagiarism and other breaches of assessment or other examination regulations.  Cheating, collusion and plagiarism are the use of unfair means of presenting work for assessment; aiding another student in the use of unfair means of presenting work for assessment; or preventing or attempting to prevent another student from being able to be assessed properly. Allegations of and investigations into assessment offences will be dealt with in accordance with the regulations and procedures in force at Taylors University for the module. Where a student is found to have committed an assessment offence a decision must be taken either to take no further action or to impose an appropriate penalty which may include failing the student and determining whether or not the student will be permitted another assessment attempt.

Where it is decided that penalty is to be imposed, the penalty could include one of the following:

a) the mark for the relevant piece of assessment be reduced; or

b) the mark awarded for the relevant piece of assessment be reduced to zero; or

c) the student be deemed to have failed the module, and is not permitted for another assessment attempt for the module.

10) Marking rubric for the assignment