School of Business and Law
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BUSM4741 Financial Analytics for Managerial Decisions
Assessment 2: Business report
| Assessment type: Individual report | Word limit: 2000 (+/- 10%) |
| Due Date: Sunday Week 5, 23:59 (Melbourne time) | |
| Weighting: 30% |
Overview
This assessment takes the form of a Business Report.
This assessment focuses on your ability to read, interpret, and analyse financial statements. The task primarily requires creating and evaluating relevant financial ratios, identifying the strengths and weaknesses in the business, and proposing strategies for future improvements.
Company details
The company to be analysed is Kogan.Com Ltd listed on Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) with a trading code of KGN.
How to succeed in this assessment
- Assess the financial reports of the designated company. You are expected to identify the ratios to be analysed, compare and evaluate the financial performance of the company and draw correct conclusions based on the analysis.
- Propose business strategies for the designated company and discuss the suitability of the current business strategies.
- Present the assignment as a standard business report. The report must be of a standard commonly expected in the commercial world in relation to contents, language, grammar, punctuation and spelling.
This assignment requires a thorough understanding of the process of closely analysing the financial statements with a view of generating meaningful insights about the businesses and benchmarking their relative position. The purpose of the assessment is for you to engage deeply with the fundamental analysis of business for informed decision-making purposes by the managers.
Assessment criteria
This assessment will measure your ability to:
- Development of analysis ratios/tools and graphs (4.5pts)
- Quality of financial analysis (12pts)
- Conclusion and suggestions (4.5pts)
- Quality of business writing (6pts)
Course learning outcomes
This assessment is relevant to the following course learning outcomes:
| CLO1 | Analyse, interpret and critically evaluate global financial information from a variety of sources in order to develop sustainable business proposals. |
| CLO2 | Create effective business reports, advice and tables tailored to specific business needs |
| CLO3 | Show effective, appropriate and persuasive collaboration and communication skills in a range of contexts. |
| CLO4 | Select, communicate and advocate effective strategies using design thinking to address complex business problems and opportunities. |
| CLO5 | Apply ethical standards to the role and conduct of financial reporting. |
Assessment details
You are required to study the annual reports of the designated company over the past three years and present your findings in a business report format. Your business report should evaluate the relative financial performance of the company based on the financial analysis results and propose strategies for future improvements.
You are expected to draw upon written material and required readings. The financial analysis should be conducted using skills and techniques learned in this course.
You are required to:
- Identify, calculate and analyse the appropriate financial ratios from the five key categories based on its annual reports
- Conduct the DuPont analysis
- Evaluate major business segments’ profitability/other relevant ratios of the designated company
- Use appropriate graphs to illustrate the relative performance of the company, including the trend of the ratios
- Discuss the suitability of the current business strategies and propose strategies for future based on your analysis.
When interpreting the financial ratios, you are required to compare the ratios with various benchmarks such as prior years, the competitors and/or the industry averages.
Please present your detailed calculations in the appendix. If you carry out your calculations using an Excel workbook (highly recommended) please copy and paste key excerpts in your appendix. Please also upload your Excel workbook for the course facilitator. Though your Excel work will not be marked but may be referred to if needed.
While discussing your analysis, correct terminology and coherent expression should be interwoven throughout. Finally, it should be a synthesis of various relevant financial ratios and their interpretation, overlaid with your own view of the overall health of the business followed by your recommendations.
Context
The purpose of the assessment is to be able to thoroughly research the financial statements of the company and reflect on current situations and possible strategies. If that helps, you may assume the company is your client and is seeking your all-round analysis and strategic propositions going forward.
Word limit
Please be mindful of word limit and communicating thoughts and ideas succinctly. A 10% allowance over the word limit is applicable; anything over 10% is liable for penalisation.
Word limit applies to main section/body only. The sections like an executive summary, table of contents, reference list and any appendices, tables, graphs and other artefacts (if any) are not included in the word count. That also assumes that the tables/artefacts in the main body are not text heavy.
Please seek further clarification from an instructor if you are unsure about adherence to word/length limits.
Some advice and general information
Analytical discussions must establish clear outcomes and follow sound reasoning based on the financial statistics generated in the process.
How to succeed in this assessment
- Financial analysis: It is essential that students are able to conduct calculations, interpretations, applications and communication of various financial ratios. Apart from the recommended readings, students must have done the activities and associated tasks on Canvas.
- Benchmarking: When interpreting the financial ratios, you are required to compare the ratios with various benchmarks such as prior years, the competitors and the industry averages. Industry average ratios can be accessed from the library resources such as IBIS World, Market Line and Passport. Other sources of financial information may be useful for your analysis. Examples are ASX, Reuters Finance, Yahoo Finance, financial newspapers such as The Australian Financial Review.
- Strategic suggestions: To assist in decision making, you are required to draw accurate conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses of the company based on the financial analysis and give persuasive suggestions. Discuss the suitability of the current business strategies and propose improvements for the future.
- Business Report: The assignment is to be presented as a business report. Thus, it is vital that it covers the necessary elements of a professional report writing. It should be visually appealing and well summarised but also must contain sufficient details may be in the appendix.
- Presentation: While reporting your analysis, attend to professionality, and parameters as set out in assessment guidelines (i.e. rubric criteria, word limits, design and structure of presented information).
Plagiarism Check
You must submit your work via Turnitin and need to ensure that you have not exceeded limits (20% similarity max) for the use of others work.
Each component of this assessment (including Excel work) falls under the Academic Integrity policy and must be the student’s own work
Referencing guidelines
Use RMIT Harvard referencing style for this assessment.
You must acknowledge all the courses of information you have used in your assessments.
Refer to the RMIT Easy Cite referencing tool to see examples and tips on how to reference in the appropriated style. You can also refer to the library referencing page for more tools such as EndNote, referencing tutorials and referencing guides for printing.
Submission format
The assessment will be submitted in Canvas as a file uploads:
- Upload your report as one Word/Pdf Document file via Turnitin submission in Canvas.
- Upload your Excel Workbook as one Excel file. Your Excel workbook must show the flow of your calculations with proper annotations. Please note that the work submitted in Excel is not evaluated for the purpose of assignment. It is only used for reference purposes when needed.
Academic integrity and plagiarism
Academic integrity is about honest presentation of your academic work. It means acknowledging the work of others while developing your own insights, knowledge and ideas.
You should take extreme care that you have:
- Acknowledged words, data, diagrams, models, frameworks and/or ideas of others you have quoted (i.e. directly copied), summarised, paraphrased, discussed or mentioned in your assessment through the appropriate referencing methods
- Provided a reference list of the publication details so your reader can locate the source if necessary. This includes material taken from Internet sites
If you do not acknowledge the sources of your material, you may be accused of plagiarism because you have passed off the work and ideas of another person without appropriate referencing, as if they were your own.
RMIT University treats plagiarism as a very serious offence constituting misconduct. Plagiarism covers a variety of inappropriate behaviours, including:
- Failure to properly document a source
- Copyright material from the internet or databases
- Collusion between students
For further information on our policies and procedures, please refer to the University website.
Assessment declaration
When you submit work electronically, you agree to the assessment declaration.
| Criteria | Ratings | Pts | ||||
| HD | D | C | P | N | ||
| Criterion 1 Development of analysis ratios/tools and graphs (15%) | The appropriate analysis ratios/tools and graphs are fully developed. | The appropriate analysis ratios/tools and graphs are mostly correctly developed. | The appropriate analysis ratios/tools and graphs are reasonably developed. | The appropriate analysis ratios/tools and graphs are somewhat correctly developed. | The analysis ratios/tools and graphs are not correctly developed. | |
| 4.5 to >3.59 pts | 3.59 to >3.14 pts | 3.14 to >2.69 pts | 2.69 to >2.24 pts | 2.24 to >0 pts | 4.5pts | |
| Criterion 2 Quality of financial analysis(40%) | Correct interpretation of the financial performance of the company. There is an excellent attempt to analyse the company using benchmarks and various tools and offer in-depth insight. | The interpretation of the financial performance of the company is mostly correct. There is a good attempt to analyse the company using benchmarks and various tools and offer in-depth insight. | Make some mistakes in the interpretation of the financial performance of the company. There is a reasonable attempt to analyse the company using benchmarks and various tools and offer in-depth insight. | Make several mistakes in the interpretation of the financial performance of the company. There is a weak attempt to analyse the company using benchmarks and various tools and offer insight. | Make many mistakes in the interpretation of the financial performance of the company. The financial analysis is insufficient or superficial. | |
| 12 to >9.59 pts | 9.59 to >8.39 pts | 8.39 to >7.19 pts | 7.19 to >5.99 pts | 5.99 to >0 pts | 12pts | |
| Criterion 3 Conclusion and suggestions(15%) | Consistently draws accurate conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses of the company and give persuasive suggestions. | There is a good attempt to draw accurate conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses of the company and give possible suggestions. | There is a reasonable attempt to draw accurate conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses of the company and give possible suggestions. | There is a weak attempt to draw accurate conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses of the company and give possible suggestions. | Does not draw an accurate conclusion on the strengths and weaknesses of the company and give possible suggestions. | |
| 4.5 to >3.59 pts | 3.59 to >3.14 pts | 3.14 to >2.69 pts | 2.69 to >2.24 pts | 2.24 to >0 pts | 4.5pts |
| Criteria | Ratings | Pts | ||||
| Criterion 4 Quality of business writing (20%) | Elegant use of formal business English. Concise and precise writing. Error-free sentence-level grammar and punctuation; broad and fluent range of vocabulary. Correct use of business terms. Correct spelling. | Proficient use of formal business English. Concise and precise writing. Error-free sentence-level grammar; broad and fluent range of vocabulary. Correct use of business terms. Correct spelling. | Proficient use of formal business English. Broad and fluent range of vocabulary. Correct use of business terms. Occasional spelling mistake. Occasional errors in grammar and punctuation. Occasional wordiness. | Limited range of vocabulary. Correct use of business terms. Several errors in spelling, grammar and. punctuation. Writing lacks precision and formality. | Attempts at simple sentences often not successful; many grammatical errors; simple vocabulary, often inappropriately used; no attempt to use business terms; wordiness and lack of formality throughout. | |
| 6 to >4.79 pts | 4.79 to >4.19 pts | 4.19 to >3.59 pts | 3.59 to >2.99 pts | 2.99 to >0 pts | 6pts | |
| Criterion 5 Layout of report and referencing (10%) | Includes all required components and follows formatting guidelines. Tables and diagrams are formatted properly and the layout enhances readability. Complete citations and reference list formatted correctly. | Includes all required components and mostly follows formatting guidelines. Minor problems in the format of tables and diagrams, which do not affect readability.Minor mistakes in the citations and reference list formatting. | Includes some required components and generally follows formatting guidelines. Several problems in the format of tables anddiagrams, affecting readability. Several mistakes in the citations and reference list formatting. | Includes some required components and generally follows formatting guidelines. Some problems in the format of tables and diagrams, affecting readability. Some mistakes in the citations and reference list formatting. | Required components are mostly absent and do not follow formatting guidelines. Formatting is repeatedly inconsistent in layout, reducing readability. Many mistakes in the citations and reference list formatting. | |
| 3 to >2.39 pts | 2.39 to >2.09 pts | 2.09 to >1.79 pts | 1.79 to >1.49 pts | 1.49 to >0 pts | 3pts | |
| Total: | 30 pts |
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