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Strategic Financial Analysis – BUSS 3083

Team case study report

This assessment is worth 40% of your course mark.

You are required to prepare a written report for the ‘target audience’ on the case company allocated to your team. This final case study assignment is to be completed in the teams you have been allocated to by your tutors/course coordinator.

An online team peer review is a compulsory component of this assignment and will be used to moderate the team report’s grades. Failure to submit this team peer review will result in a penalty being applied (please see the Course Outline for further details).

A submission link for the assignment will be made available on LearnOnline closer to the deadline.

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to test students’ ability to scope, synthesise and evaluate information for investors’ decision making. It asks students to appreciate the context and operations of a real company, individually and as a team. Students will need to thoroughly research and reference their work including all company reports that have  been used.  In general,  attention  must  be  given  to  not  only  summarising  ‘facts’  about  the  case  study company (and competitors), but critically analysing past  performance, current trends and forming strongly reasoned recommendations for investment decision making. The quality of arguments, the way information is used to justify evaluations, and the soundness (viability) of  recommendations for the target  audience  will  be  important  for  scoring  higher  marks. Written communication skills are assessed.

This  assessment  encompasses the five  Course  Objectives  and  six  of  the  UniSA  Graduate Qualities detailed in the Course Outline, except oral communication skills which was covered in an earlier assessment. The assessment design in this course is also underpinned by the UniSA Business Enterprise Skills Framework and AACSB Assurance of Learning practices.

The Task

You  are  a team  of financial  analysts  and  you  have  been  hired  by  a group  of  risk-averse investors with   limited technical expertise (i.e.  your   “target  audience”)  to   prepare  a professional  business  report.  The  business  report  is  to  provide  a  recommendation  as  to

whether the investors should buy more of your case company’s shares, sell their current holdings, or hold their current holdings until a later date  using the  ‘most  likely’ forecast assumptions. You will specifically need to address the following topic areas in drawing your conclusions:

1.   Macroeconomic factors

2.   Industry analysis and business strategy

3.   Governance and ethics

4.   Accounting analysis

5.   Ratio analysis

6.   Fundamental analysis and valuation of the target company

7.   Technical analysis of the target company

8.   An evaluation of the solvency of the company and the implications of your results in 1. – 7 above.

Your team’s business report should be approximately 2,500 words. A further 250 words is allowed to write an Executive Summary of your business report. Appendices must be used to  provide  supplementary  evidence,  such  as  the  calculations  you   have   used  for  your forecasts, and should (at a minimum) include the relevant Microsoft Excel templates from the course. However, these appendices are for the reader’s/marker’s reference and do not provide additional marks.

Specific guidance for the assignment

Analysis and recommendations: In preparing your recommendations, you can use any of the analytical approaches/tools/methods learnt in this course, though you must use (and submit for review) the two Microsoft Excel Workbooks1 provided on the course website in developing  your   pricing/timing recommendations.  As   part  of  developing   professional judgement, and the application of this judgement, students will  need to  evaluate which analytical approaches/tools/methods they decide to apply (or not to apply) and why.

Furthermore, the reports should appraise which approaches/tools/methods produce results which   are   weighted   more    in   forming   recommendations   to    investors.   As a    purely hypothetical   example,  you   may   use   two   different   analytical   models   to   discuss   the competitive context  of your  case  company.  However, the  two  models  may  yield  slightly contradictory  results  in  terms  of  your  recommendation  for  investors.  Therefore,  as  an analyst, you will need to justify which model to rely on the most in forming your opinions about the company.

Thus, this task is not about applying as many different frameworks as possible, but deciding on which best suit the analysis required to satisfy the decision making needs of the target audience.  Importantly,  this  is  an  applied  task,  so  your  reports  should  not  aim  to  give  a discourse of theory (e.g. – dedicating several paragraphs purely to defining/ explaining what cost leadership or differentiation is, or purely explaining the steps in accounting analysis).

You will need to synthesise your understanding of theory through your analysis of the case company.

Structure: You  should   prepare   a   professional   business   reports   which   are   structured appropriately   (e.g.   –    Executive    Summary,    Introduction,    Report    Body,    Conclusions, Recommendation, Appendices) and care should  be taken to  ensure  each  element  of the report is clear, consistent and of a reasonable length given the word limit (e.g. appendices should be used for calculations, data, etc …, and not as a repository for write-up/information which could  not  be fitted  into the  body  of the  report  because of the word  limit).  Please ensure you reference all sources of evidence including company data appropriately using the APA 7 referencing style:

https://lo.unisa.edu.au/course/view.php?id=3839&sectionid=555859

It is envisaged that many sections of your analyses and recommendations will be interlinked. Students who are able to draw relevant connections between their analysis in different sections to form recommendations for the target audience are likely to score higher. Please remember, this is an analyst’s report so your insights, critique and demonstrated ability to produce viable conclusions based on your case company’s context will be important.

Writing guidance: Where  students  require  further  guidance  on  report  writing,  they  are encouraged to refer to the following resource:

Fleet, W., Summers, J., & Smith, B. (2006). Report writing. In Communication skills handbook for accounting (2nded., pp. 63–75). John Wiley & Sons.

ISBN: 9780470810071

Furthermore,  there   is  a   resource  on   how  to  write   a  business  report  under  the   “Skill development resources” tab of our LearnOnline site.

After  referring  to  the  above  resource,  if  students  have  queries  about  structuring  a professional report please make an inquiry on the discussion forums.

Team management: EVERY student in the team is expected to contribute to all elements of the assignment. While a team  member can lead a  particular  part  of the assignment, e.g. strategy  analysis,  the  other   members  of  the  team  still  need  to  take  an  active  role   in brainstorming,  researching  and  supporting  the  writing/development  of  that  part.  Some teams  delegate  whole   parts  of  the   assignment  to   individual  students,  which   leads  to numerous problems if a particular student becomes unavailable, or if the contribution from that student is not what is expected from the team.

General Information for this assignment

Strategic Financial Analysis Case Studies - Learning Outcomes

This information is for students in the Commerce or Commerce (Accounting) programs. As you work on the case studies in Strategic Financial Analysis, keep in mind the accounting learning outcomes that the assessment develops.  Learning  outcomes are what graduates  of  Bachelor

Extensions are only available for exceptional/unexpected/unforeseen circumstances that impact the team  as  a  whole  and  for  a  valid  reason  as  outlined  in  UniSA’s  Assessment  Policies  and Procedures  Manual.  Equally,  the  extension   request  must  be   made  before  the  assessment deadline  and  be  supported   by  valid   documentary  evidence  (refer  to  UniSA’s  Policies  and Procedures Manual), no exceptions. In addition, if the extension is requested within one week of the due date, a copy of the work completed to date also needs to be provided. This is to establish that failure to complete this assignment by the due date was caused by unforeseen circumstances beyond the students’ control and not due to time management issues.

It should be noted that the circumstances outlined in the documentary evidence, and the circumstances  surrounding  the  extension  request  will  form  the  basis  for  the  extension granted  (for  example,  an  extension  request  lodged   1  day  prior  to  the  due  date  with  a medical certificate outlining a period of sickness of  1 day will  result  in a  1-day extension being granted). Extensions are granted after considering the evidence of each case at the discretion of the Course Coordinator.

Late  penalty: 10%  of  total   marks  available   per  day,  or   part  thereof,  overdue  without approved extension. Assignments submitted more than 7 calendar days after the due date will not be accepted or marked.

Academic Integrity: As  this   is  a  capstone  course,  students  will   be  familiar  with   rules regarding academic integrity from their prior studies. For your reference, further details are available athttps://lo.unisa.edu.au/course/view.php?id=3839.

Individual students and teams should save all ‘work in progress’ drafts that lead to the final submission in case these need to be reviewed for Academic Integrity purposes.

Use  of  Generative  Artificial  Intelligence (GenAI): The  purpose  of  this  assessment  is  to demonstrate a student's and/or their team's own technical understanding and knowledge of the course content.

The use of GenAI to generate text, numbers, graphs/figures, or insights which are directly used  or   paraphrased/modified  and   used  as   part  of  an  assessment   item,  regardless  of acknowledgement, is not permitted.