To Prepare an Analyst Report on a Publicly Listed, Dividend-Paying Company: Finance Assignment, OU, Australia

Objective:

To prepare an analyst report on a publicly listed, dividend-paying company

Skills acquired:

• discipline knowledge;
• thinking skills;
• learning how to learn

Specifically, conduct research on a company and report on key areas of shareholder analysis, risk-return analysis, cost of capital, and financial statement analysis.

Research Project details

You are to select a publicly listed dividend-paying company from the Australian Stock Exchange and conduct a detailed analysis of it.

You must Not select the following company:

• ANZ bank
• Bega Cheese
• BHP
• Blackmores Group
• Caltex
• Commonwealth bank
• Coca-Cola Amatil Limited
• Crown
• Domino’s Pizza
• Evolution Mining
• Fortescue Metals Group
• Harvey Norman
• JBHiFi
• Land lease
• Macquarie bank
• Mineral Resources
• Monadelphous Group
• National Australia bank
• Qantas
• Rio Tinto
• Suncorp bank
• Telstra
• Treasury Wine Estates
• Westpac bank
• Wesfarmers
• Woodside
• Woolworths

The purpose of this assignment is to use your acquired knowledge from this unit to investigate then the financial strength of a public listed company. Your research should cover the following areas:

1. shareholder analysis;
2. risk-return analysis;
3. cost of capital; and
4. financial statement analysis

In each of the areas, you are to report your findings using the questions provided below as a guide.

If the information is not from the company’s annual report, you will have to provide details on

1. where you sourced the information; and
2. comment on how you have verified its reliability.

If the information is from the annual report, you do not need to reference, but you have to include the page number of the annual report from which the information has been taken from. You should include the balance sheet and income statement in the appendix and refer to the numbers used in the calculation.

You must write the report completely by yourself. You are not to purchase or reproduce commercial stock reports.

There are four sections to the assignment.

1. Shareholder analysis – Who are the owners of the company and the implication of the choice of methods used to calculate the cost of return.
2. Risk-return analysis – Analyse the return received over the market for the apparent risks identified in the company.
3. Cost of capital – Calculate the cost of capital using various methods and analyze your findings.
4. Financial statement analysis – Determine the future of the company by analyzing the performance of the company