Reference no: EM132509957 , Length: word count:3000

MPA702 - Financial Interpretation Assignment - Deakin University

Learning Outcome 1: Assess the financial standing of an entity by examining relevant financial information and identify how disclosure techniques can support business decisions.

Learning Outcome 2: Evaluate scenarios involving ethical decisions in financial accounting.

Learning Outcome 3: Collaborate with peers to present and defend financial information and decisions.

Requirements:
This assignment is a team task which involves self-learning, some ‘real world' research and team-work skills.

Step 1 -Team formation
All groups must consist of a minimum of two and up to three members.

Students will self -select their groups. Where possible Cloud students may wish to group with other Cloud students, and on campus with on campus. Students will be allocated the company on which their report is to be based once you have formed your groups and you have enrolled yourselves into a group online. You will be advised of your company via your Cloud Deakin group discussion forum.

A student is not able to withdraw from the team he or she has been allocated to in Cloud Deakin unless the student decides to withdraw from the unit. In that case the withdrawing student must, as a courtesy, inform the unit chair and their team members so the team impacted by the withdrawal is informed.

Each team will be assigned a company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) for the group assignment. Each team will have its own ‘private' discussion forum set up in CloudDeakin to facilitate team discussions. It is compulsory to use CloudDeakin ‘private' discussion forum which enables the Unit Chair to assess each team member's participation and contribution in case there are any disputes between students in a team. The Unit Chair can also participate in the online discussion by providing necessary guidance if off-track discussions/activities are observed. But please note the group discussion forums will not be actively monitored. If a team chooses to use communication applications such as Whatsapp and Skype etc. in order to facilitate online meetings or conversations, the team must be prepared to provide screen shots of the communication in the event of member disputes.

Step 2 - Self-Learning
Read chapter 10 of the prescribed textbook and:
1. Be able to calculate financial ratios;
2. Understand the meaning of each financial ratio; and
3. Understand and be able to use financial ratios to assess a company's financial performance, financial position and market performance.

Step 3 - Financial analysis
You are required to calculate and analyse all relevant ratios for a three-year period (2017- 2019). Each group member must calculate one year of ratios (ensuring same formulas are used) and evidence of this participation must be included in your group discussion area.
Analyse the changes in the following ratios of the company based on your three-year calculations:
1) profitability
2) operating efficiency
3) liquidity and solvency and
4) market performance

Other information relevant to your analysis:
To enable a comprehensive analysis of your company there will be additional relevant information including, but not limited to, performance of, and existence of competitors and regulatory and/or environmental factors influencing your company/industry. When undertaking your company research, you must utilise current financial press (such as The Age, Financial Review, The Australian, or appropriate relevant on-line business sites*). A minimum of five articles relevant to your company (or industry sector) over the period of analysis must be incorporated into your report discussion. You are encourages to use more than five to support your discussion where required.

Step 4 Writing up group report and submitting the group assignment
Your report must adhere to the structure set out below:

Section 1 Title page:
• The title page should be the first page of your report. It must include the following information:
• Title: ‘Analysis and interpretation of the performance of (name of company)' Unit code and unit name: MPA702 - Financial Interpretation
• Name of the Unit Chair: Ms Rhonda Ryan
• A table with the team number, the full names and Deakin student ID of team members and each member's contribution to the overall assignment (must be in percentage format)
• Due date Tuesday May 12th, by 10.00am (AEST). If granted a time extension, then insert the revised date approved by the Unit Chair (show approved date)
• The following statement: "We certify that the attached work is entirely our own, except where material quoted or paraphrased is acknowledged in the text. We also declare that it has not been submitted for assessment in any other unit or course."
• Reports that do not contain this statement will not be assessed.

Section 2 Introduction (maximum 250 words):
Contains a concise discussion of:
• The background of the company;
• The purpose of the group assignment.

Section 3 Trend and cross-sectional financial analysis (maximum 2,000 words): You must use the financial ratios to analyse a company's three years' (2017-2019) profitability, operating efficiency, liquidity, solvency and market performance. You need to analyse whether the changes of a company's financial position and performance are caused by any external factors such as regulatory changes, increased market competition, changes of consumer preferences, foreign exchange fluctuation or some other relevant events, especially when there are significant changes in performance (hint: you may find this information from director's report or media reports).Researching from the financial press will be relevant here. Also, remember to take all ratios, where appropriate, to two decimal places (ie ROE 10.75% not 10%)
If you are able to find industry averages, compare a company's financial ratios with the industry average. However, this is not often available data. In addition, you may want to enhance the relevance of your report by including the most recent reports released by your company, such as the mid- year 2019 - 2020 reports which are generally available on the company's website from March of the current year.

This is to be presented as a business report so therefore use appropriate sub-headings throughout your report.

Section 4 Conclusion (maximum 500 words):
Provide a summary of the issues raised with concluding remarks and recommendations regarding your investment decision.

Section 5 References:
Any material used in this assignment must be acknowledged and appropriately referenced. Plagiarism by any student is a serious matter and, if it occurs, it will be dealt with on a case- by-case basis with penalties imposed. Please refer to the Unit Guide for more information on ‘referencing'. The reference list (using Harvard Referencing System which you can find from CloudDeakin Internal Assessment folder) is not included in the total word count and this gives flexibility as to the extent of the research that is necessary to form opinions.

Please make sure that you adhere to the total word limit (3000 words). A 10% tolerance will be applied. A penalty of 20% will be applied to assessments of excessive length.
Each page of the report should be numbered, and every page must have a header that identifies full name and I.D. of every contributing student, and the unit code MPA702.
You can use figures (or tables) to exhibit the trend change of a company's financial ratios. If figures are used, they need to be fully discussed and analysed. Figures should be numbered sequentially, given appropriate captions and placed in the main body of your report at suitable points. Please attach your ratio calculations to your submission as the Appendix.

Step 5 Submission
The written report must be submitted electronically by the due date as a Microsoft Word document by uploading it to the Dropbox in CloudDeakin. Each group must nominate one member to upload the report. When uploading your report, give the document a name using the following syntax: <Group number_MPA702.doc (or ‘.docx'), for example, ‘Group 1_MPA702.doc'. Submitting a hard copy of this report is not required.

Please review the section on ‘Plagiarism' in the Unit Guide. You need to check that your report does not contain plagiarism. This is done automatically when submitting your report to the ‘Dropbox', using Turnitin, which checks your report for plagiarism and generates an originality report that you can use to be confident that your report does not contain plagiarism. Turnitin will tell us (but tell you first) the extent to which your work has copied material from others without appropriate recognition through referencing. If this is excessive you will lose marks or you may not receive any marks, or you may have some form of disciplinary action taken if the issue is severe. Take appropriate action to amend your report to avoid this from happening. Note that uploading your report to Turnitin via the prescribed link in CloudDeakin for this unit constitutes submission to this unit AND also constitutes a declaration regarding the contents of the report being all your own work, except where appropriate references to the work of others has been acknowledged. You can upload your report to Dropbox as many times as you like up to the due date. In order to avoid a late submission penalty, you must upload your report to Dropbox by the due date. Reports that are submitted after the due date can still be uploaded to the Dropbox. However, a penalty will be imposed where reports are submitted past the due date up to 5 days late, thereafter reports will not be marked. Please Faculty guidelines on this.

Group/s that require a time extension in relation to this report should apply through the application form on your Cloud Deakin site. Students are also reminded that extensions will only be given for exceptional and unusual circumstances outside the students' control as per the guidelines on the extension application form.

Attachment:- Financial Interpretation.rar