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COMM1140 Financial Management

Group Assignment

Instructions:
The group assignment is worth 20% of the total assessment for this course. In your week 7 tutorials, you will
be divided into groups of 4 or 5 students. Each group will be allocated one of the below companies which
you must use to complete the task below. The 2020 annual report of your allocated company must be used
to complete this assessment. Half-yearly reports for the 2021 financial year may also be used to inform your
analysis. You may also use other relevant annual reports for comparative purposes.
1. Harvey Norman
2. JB Hi-Fi
3. Myer
4. The Reject Shop
5. Kogan
6. Temple & Webster Group
Assignment:
The COVID-19 pandemic had had a damaging impact on all Australian businesses. State lockdowns and
border closures have meant retail companies have faced a challenging and uncertain business environment.
However, with the roll-out of several vaccines that help prevent the spread of COVID-19, there is some hope
that the second half of 2021 will see the business environment ‘return to normal’. This is certainly welcome
news for all Australian businesses, particularly those that have been most severely impacted by the
pandemic.
You are Clara Cleary, a UNSW Bachelor of Commerce graduate in 2020 who quickly found employment in
Felicity Trust, a financial services company that specialises in providing syndicate loans to large Australian
businesses. You have been asked by your manager – Lucy Brooks – to prepare a report that will help Felicity
Trust decide on its continued involvement in a syndicated loan that is due to roll over on 31 August 2021.
This is the first task your manager has asked you to complete independently, and you want to make sure you
impress! You know from your peers that Lucy is very busy and will not read any report that is greater than
four pages long. Luckily, you took notes when the task was assigned to you, which should be strictly followed
to prepare the report. These are as follows:
1. A description of the business and the nature of its operations. This should focus on providing a short
explanation of the business’s history, how it generates revenue, and who forms its customer base (5
Marks);
2. An analysis of the financial performance and financial position of the company (35 Marks);
3. Identify two risks from reading the reports prepared by key management personnel (i.e. Board Chair
and/or CEO) in the 2020 annual report that may impact the company's future financial performance and/or
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financial position. You should explain clearly how the risks you identify may impact on the ratios discussed
in part 2 above (10 Marks);
4. Using two EV Multiples and two Equity Multiples of two similar companies to your assigned company:
a) Provide a market valuation range and mid-point of your allocated company’s outstanding equity.
Provide the evidence of data collected with proper referencing and the calculations to substantiate
your valuation. (10 marks)
b) Compare your allocated company with the two similar companies and determine which of the two
is the most similar. Provide evidence of the comparison. (10 marks)
c) Based on this comparison, narrow the valuation range and mid-point found in part (a) to something
more reasonable. Show how you go about implementing this adjustment. (5 marks)
5. A short description on whether you would recommend Felicity Trust continuing its involvement in the
syndicate loan. (5 marks)
Part one. Written Submission (80 Marks)
You must prepare a written report that addresses all points above. All reports must be submitted one hour
before the commencement of your week 10 tutorial. Please use the submission folder on Moodle to
submit your assignment. You must attach a cover sheet to your submission, which includes the names and
Z-id’s of all group members. The cover sheet is available on the COMM1140 Moodle site. You should be
aware that all submissions will be analysed for plagiarism, and any violations will be forwarded to a business
school academic misconduct officer. All submissions must be prepared using Arial size 10 font with 1.5 line-
spacing and be a maximum of 4 pages (excluding cover page, references and appendices). The use of
“Narrow Margins” is allowed (Top, Left, Bottom, Right, 1.27cm). Please ensure in-text references follow
Havard-style referencing (See: https://student.unsw.edu.au/harvard-referencing). An executive summary is
not requied.
You should address the report for the attention of your manager (i.e., Lucy Brooks). Furthermore, you may
only use the ratios provided in the “COMM1140 Ratio List” document (available on Moodle) to analyse the
financial position and financial performance of the company allocated to your group. The calculation of all
ratios used in your report should be provided in the report’s appendix. You should select the most relevant
ratios to inform your analysis, and if needed, you can deviate from the calculation shown in this list (i.e. if
exact terms recommended to calculate the ratio in this document do not appear in your company’s financial
statements). However, make sure to show in the appendix how you have calculated each ratio.
Please note that late submissions will immediately lose 5 marks. For every 24 hours the submission is late,
a further 5 marks will be lost. Detailed submission instructions will be provided by week 9.
Part two. Presentation (20 Marks)
You are required to present a summary of your report in your week 10 tutorial. The presentation should
address all topics/questions outlined in the assignment above. You have 15 minutes for this presentation
which must include a 10-minute presentation of your report’s findings and 5-minute Questions and Answers
session. The 10-minute presentation can be pre-recorded or presented live. All group members must speak
during the 15-minute presentation (i.e. either in the report presentation or Q&A, or both).
Your presentation slides do not need to be submitted with your written submission on Moodle (i.e. TurnItIn).
However, they should be emailed to your tutor in advance of your tutorial. Please provide sufficient time for
your tutor to download your slides in advance of your presentation. If you decide to pre-record your
presentation, this does not need to be submitted via Moodle (i.e. TurnItIn), and it does not need to be emailed
to your tutor.
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Other information:
1. The report primarily covers content discussed in the week 7 and 8 lectures. You should be able to
begin answering questions 1-3 after the week 7 lecture/tutorial and question 4 after the week 8
lecture/tutorial.
2. Your report may be a maximum of four pages. We suggest you use the question marks as a guide
when deciding how to structure the report. For example, question 2 is worth 35/80 marks for the
written report. This would suggest that this question should take approximately 1 ½ to 1 ¾ pages to
answer.
3. For further instructions on how to complete questions 2 and 3 above, you should listen to the following
video from COMM1140’s deeper understanding video series: Using Financial Ratios to Interpret
Financial Performance and PositionFile
4. Question 5 should provide a recommendation to your manager and reference evidence for your
decision based on information contained in earlier sections of your report (i.e. no new evidence should
be introduced in this section; the argumentation supporting your recommendation should be based
on information presented in answers to questions 1-4). There is no ‘correct’ answer here – students
can provide valid arguments of “yes, extend the loan facility” or “No, do not extend the loan facility”
for each company. We are interested in the rationale used to support your decision!
5. A marking rubric is not provided. You should apply what you learn in the week 7 and 8 lectures to
prepare this report. This task is one you could be asked to complete in a graduate role in business.
Often, for these tasks in the real world, you do not have a sample to work off; your manager simply
gives you the task, and you must respond! The idea of this task is to prepare you for such a scenario
that you will encounter in the future. If you have questions, please post them in the group assignment
forum on Moodle, and the teaching team will respond:
https://moodle.telt.unsw.edu.au/mod/forum/view.php?id=3766851
6. We hope to be able to move back to on-campus tutorials by week 10. However, should this not be
possible, all presentations will be made via Zoom in your final tutorial.
7. Do not overload your presentation slides with information; less is often more. You should assume
your manager (and tutor) has read your report, and you are summarising the critical evidence that
helps you answer questions 1-5 in your presentation. You only have 10 minutes to convince your
manager you know what you are talking about – make it count!
8. We have a formal policy in place should a student feel that workload is not fairly allocated across all
members of the group. The below steps only need to be completed if you feel member(s) of your
group have not contributed to the assignment. If a member of a group feels that one or more
members of their group have not contributed to the assignment, the following steps need to be taken:
a. One group member needs to email all group members and state that they want to submit a
‘workload breakdown’ to their tutor when submitting the assignment in week 10.
b. Following submission of the assignment, each group member needs to confidentially email
their tutor the following information:
i. Your name:
ii. Tutorial Time: (i.e. T12A)
iii. Company: (i.e. Harvey Norman)
iv. You must allocate 100 points (total) for your group across your group members based
on each members contribution to the assignment. For example, if your group has five
students, and you allege a member did not contribute anything to the assignment, you
would send the following:
1. Member One: 25
2. Member Two: 25
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3. Member Three: 25
4. Member Four: 25
5. Member Five: Zero
v. If your group has four students, and you allege a member contributed significantly less
than others, you would send the following:
1. Member One: 30
2. Member Two: 30
3. Member Three: 30
4. Member Four: 10
vi. You should also include a list of tasks that you completed in the assignment in the
email.
c. The names of all students in the group should be included on the Group Cover Sheet when
submitting the assignment. The COMM1140 teaching team will review the student
submissions, and students found not to contribute to the group assignment may receive a
reduced grade. Depending on the impact of the non-contributing group member, the grades
of other students in the group may also be adjusted/increased in recognition of their efforts


































































































































































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