Assessment # 2: Business Report

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School of Business
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Course Code: BUSM4741
Subject Name: Financial Analytics for
Managerial Decisions
Assessment # 2: Business Report
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.
To do well, you should be able to:
1. 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.
2. Propose business strategies for the designated company and discuss the suitability of the
current business strategies.
Assessment Type: Individual Word limit: 2000 (+/– 10%)
Due date: Sunday of Week 5, 23.59
(AEDT) (Melbourne time)
Weighting 30 %
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3. 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.
Course Learning outcomes
This assessment is aligned with:
• 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 a company over the past three years and present your findings in a
business report format. The company you have to analyse is referred to in the Canvas Assesment 2 information
page. 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 of the 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 the industry averages.
Please present your detailed calculations in an 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.
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.
Word limit:
2,000 words (+/- 10%)
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 or graphs are not
included in the word count. Please seek further clarification from an instructor if you are unsure about adherence to
word/length limits.
Submission file type:
Word Document or Pdf file for your report and Excel spreadsheet for your calculations.
Some advice and general information
Analytical discussions must establish clear outcomes and follow sound reasoning based on the financial statistics
generated in the process.
Assessment details (cont.)
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 thefuture.
• 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 presentedinformation).
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.
Referencing guidelines
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.
Referencing style
You should adopt the RMIT business style of referencing, i.e., in-text referencing (e.g., Winchester &
Leenders, 2014). All quotations and references should be properly sourced. Inadequate details of
publications and other sources will reduce the assessed grade.
Submission format
1. Upload your report as one Word/Pdf Document file via Turnitin submission on Assessment 2:
Business Report page in Canvas.
2. Upload your Excel Workbook as one Excel file. Your Excel workbook must show the flow of
your calculations with proper annotations.
Academic integrity and plagiarism
Academic integrity is about the 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.

Adapted from Accounting Financial Statement Analysis- communication rubrics. http://amazonanalysis.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/7/0/14703170/grading20rubric.pdf