Financial Management and Decision Making

Learning Outcome 1: Interpret, critically evaluate, and synthesise information and data from appropriate sources, and use these to make informed judgments in critical business areas.

Learning Outcome 2: Communicate complex financial information and present arguments in a professional manner.

Financial Analysis of an Existing Company

Role
Assume you are the finance manager in an organisation, you have been directed by the finance director to make a presentation to a group of potential investors looking to invest in your organisation.

You are required to prepare a financial analysis using an appropriate performance matrix and present your findings about the financial performance of the company on efficiency, liquidity, and profitability. You are required to use the information provided in the company's annual accounts, including the market performance of the shares and dividend payments of the organisation, evaluating it for the benefit of the potential investors, who will be invited to attend a short presentation provided by you. You have also been asked to critically assess the relevance of annual reports to stakeholders and the role the provision of additional internal management information plays in financial analyses when speaking to potential investors. Get your questions answered now!

Assignment Tasks:
You should select a company that trades on the stock market (Public limited company - Plc). You will need to obtain a copy of their most recent annual report/accounts, alongside any other internal management information which will help you analyse the company's financial performance.

You must let your tutor know your chosen organisation. Prepare a presentation, based on the financial information in the annual report and internal management data. The presentation is to be made to an invited group of potential investors. The presentation will be for 20 minutes and will be followed by questions from the examiners.

You can consider the following in your structure:
Structure of the Business including size, products, and governance
Understanding financial analysis and its usefulness in organisations
Implementation of relevant ratio analysis - calculation or extraction from annual report financial statements.
Measuring the performance of the company - interpretation of the ratio data
Shares & dividends performance - calculating and interpreting share price, PE/ratio & dividends payout.
Relevance of annual reports to stakeholders.

Additional internal management information relevant to potential investors.
You may wish to consider any two of the following as additional internal management information.
- Strategic Planning
- Change Management Issues if any
- Global/International Competition
- Global Market and economic Challenges etc.