Gearing leverage and investment performance

Students are to organise themselves into groups of three or four to complete the assignment and do not have automatic entitlement to adopt some other arrangement (such as completing the assignment individually or in a larger group). Students who have difficulty finding a partner or who encounter other difficulties (for example, their partner withdraws from the course) should consult the Course Coordinator. There is no requirement that your partner be from the same tutorial group as yourself.

The basic requirement is to make a general analysis of the profitability, efficiency, liquidity, gearing (leverage), and investment performance of Billabong Limited using the information available in the company’s 2015 annual report available available at Billaboing Annual Report 2016

The written report should:

• Explain briefly what is revealed by the ratios and other calculations in the context of the company’s profitability, efficiency, liquidity, gearing (leverage) and investment performance. In particular, any important changes from 2015 to 2016 should be identified, discussed and, where possible, explained.

SECTIONS IN REPORT:

Complete assignment in appropriate report format. Suggested report structure and headings:

 Name of the Course-Coordinator and of your tutor

 Trimester, year and date of submission

• convey the purpose of the report,

• give a summary of key themes, ideas or findings (sub‐headings may be used),

The main body of the report should include a discussion of what is revealed by the ratios and other calculations in the context of the company’s profitability, efficiency, liquidity, gearing (leverage) and investment performance. In particular, any important changes from 2015 to 2016 should be identified, discussed and, where possible, explained. The main areas of analysis are:

• Profitability

6. CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS

The Conclusion is your evaluation or summary of the major points and key findings as discussed in the Body of the report. The Conclusion should always be concise and must not contain any new information. It should not require a substantial number of words to draw information together and summarise what you have found.

The appendix must contain a one page summary in table format of the results of your ratio calculations. This summary of your ratio results should be followed by the actual ratio calculations and workings. Footnotes should also be used in your appendix to justify any values you have used in your calculations where there is some uncertainty if you have selected the correct figure (value) from the annual report to be used in the formulas.

9. REFERENCES

• Implications of your findings on the various

• Possible reasons and explanations behind the company’s fianacial performance and results

The ‘Presentation check-list’ (see attached appendix) indicates the requirements and expected standards concerning presentation. An assignment that complies with the guidelines highlighted in this check-list would normally be expected to achieve the required presentation standard (see assessment criteria below). If further guidance is required, students should in the first instance refer to the General Guide to Writing and Study Skills and General Guide to Referencing

REFERENCING

• Overall neatness, completeness and quality of presentation.

Degree level students are expected to achieve a satisfactory standard with respect to this criterion as a matter of course and for this reason no credit will be granted for achieving it. However, assignments that fail to achieve the minimum standard in connection with this criterion will be penalised. The expected standard concerning this criterion is contained in the attached ‘Presentation check-list’.

• Demonstrated understanding of financial reports and ratios and other indicators of profitability, efficiency, liquidity, gearing (leverage), and investment performance.

This criterion relates specifically to the requirement to submit a written report and carries a weighting of 18 marks out of the 30 available for the whole assignment. Written reports in excess of 2,500 words will be penalised.

Students must not allow other students to copy their work and must take care to safeguard against this happening. In cases of copying, normally all students involved will be penalised equally; an exception will be if the student can demonstrate the work is their own and they took reasonable care to safeguard against copying.

Plagiarism is a serious offence. Please refer to the following documents:

Section references are to the University’s General Guide for the Presentation of Academic Work (revised edition, 2014). All students should ensure that they have a copy of this document before commencing work on the assignment.

Completed

3. We have read the section concerning ‘Layout an appearance’ and complied with its guidelines. Please note that ‘1.5’ or ‘double’ spacing is required for the written sections of this assignment.

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Note: As per p.36, the abstract follows immediately after the title page and ‘should summarise or précis the content of the work’. Note that the abstract or synopsis should not simply be a restatement of the topic, nor a table of contents in prose form.

6. If our assignment contains a table of contents, it has been prepared in accordance with the General Guide to Writing and Study Skills.

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10. We have read the General Guide to Referencing which deals with the APA citation style, and used the APA system in our assignment.

12. We have carefully proofread our assignment prior to submitting it. (Simply running the assignment through a spell-checker, while helpful, is not a substitute for a careful proofreading). When proofreading our assignment we endeavoured to identify and correct all spelling, punctuation, grammatical and other similar errors.

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