Reference no: EM132220413

The task

- The assignment is designed to assess your understanding of business finance theories and explores a number of areas within the course by applying your learning to a real company. Through this project, you need to be able to demonstrate critical and analytical skills in academic writing, various research synthesising skills and be able to communicate clearly and effectively.

- Please note this is a finance assignment for real business, so make sure you have the appropriate combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Format and referencing
- Response to case study must be in report format and include an executive summary, table of contents, introduction, body with suitable headings and sub-headings, conclusion and wide variety of references.

- Report fonts must be either Arial or Times Roman 12 pt and 1.5 spacing for narrative, 16 pt bold for major headings and 14 pt bold for sub-headings.

- Word count is 2,000 words maximum (excluding tables, formulae, reference list and appendices)

- Inclusion of diagrams and tables to support the response is strongly encouraged.

- Proper referencing of all content including figures, tables and narrative using APA Reference system.

- Demonstrations of using your initiative and supporting your answers with interesting references to contemporary issues from newspapers, journals, professional publications, web resources i.e. extracts from podcasts, financial institutional websites etc. Wikipedia and Investopedia are not recommended to be used as sources.

Task requirements:

Suppose you are a financial analyst and you have been asked to analyse an ASX listed company. Your task is to make a recommendation as to whether or not this company is an attractive investment opportunity. Before you draw a conclusion, you are required to:

1) Discuss how successful the company has been at maximizing stakeholders value over analysing period. The discussion should be based on appropriate metrics and benchmarks.

2) Analyse the company's share price history and traded volumes over the analysing period, it can be over the past 12 months, 2 years, or 5 years.

3) Calculate the return for investing in the company both short term and long term and indentify the main causes of its volatility in return over the corresponding holding period. The discussion of volatility should consider economic-wide and firm-specific factors.

4) Apply the valuation technique(s) taught in this course and undertake a current valuation of the equity for your company. Based on your calculation, would you recommend a prospective investor to buy, hold or sell this security and why.

5) Evaluate the company's investment projects. Is there a typical project for the company during the analysing period? If so, apply analytical skills relating to the topic taught in this course and evaluate the profitability of the project, the investment horizon whether is a long term or short term project, the cash flow pattern and how the company has financed the project.

6) Analyse the company's dividend policy. Should the company follow a progressive dividend policy? Critically evaluate factors that are affecting corporate dividend policy and how your company's dividend policy may have influenced its capital structure and share price.

7) Estimate the overall cost of capital and analyse the current capital structure. How would you describe the current capital structure for your company and justify with reasons that should potential investors view this company as a favourable investment choice?

8) Based on the attempt to all of above questions conclude whether your company is an attractive investment opportunity. You should clearly explain all of your assumptions used in the valuations and estimations; for the technique(s) and model(s) adopted state why you think they are appropriate for your company; attempt to reconcile any differences in results/outcomes that you obtain by using different technique(s) and model(s); finally, critical discuss the weaknesses of your analysis and any other risks that may affect investors' decision making.

Note: There are over 2,000 companies listed on the ASX, thus your graders expect that it is unlikely two groups will be investigating the same company. It is the graders expectations, that we see analysis of a variety of different companies from the different groups covering different dates.

Attachment:- Assessment.rar