Analysis of the Financial Condition, Performance, and Outlook of Two Listed Retail Companies: Accounting for Managers Assignment, UoA, Singapore

TOPIC:

Analysis of the financial condition, performance, and outlook of two listed retail companies, being JB Hi-Fi Limited and Challenger Technologies Limited.

ASSIGNMENT OBJECTIVES:

This assignment has the following broad aims and objectives:

• To allow you the opportunity to employ the concepts and techniques introduced in the first seven topics of the course to a “real world” example;
• To gain an appreciation that financial success or failure is driven by a wide-ranging set of factors and influences;
• To develop skills in conducting research into a company.  For example, you may find it helpful to explore the newspaper databases available on the University of Adelaide Library website(such as the Factiva database).  As this assignment will require you to examine a variety of sources of information, you should start your work on it as soon as possible;
• To develop skills in teamwork;
• To develop written communication skills

BACKGROUND AND REQUIREMENTS:

In this assignment you are asked to study the publicly available information relating these companies to determine the following:

• What insight the publicly available information provides;
• What are the underlying causes (internal and external) of the company’s current state of affairs;
• What is the future looking like for each company

Required:

Considerable background information regarding these companies can be found by searching other sources such as Australian and Singaporean Stock Exchanges, websites, and Internet articles. Having researched the publicly available information on the on JBHi Fi and Challenger, prepare a report that contains responses to the following questions:

(a) Briefly describe the industry, activities, and structure of each company. In addition, summarise each company’s current financial position and state of affairs.

(b) Conduct a thorough analysis of the financial position and performance of each company. Your analysis should include a discussion of the following items

• Profitability
• Liquidity (including cash flow)
• Solvency/Leverage
• Share market performance

Your analysis will need to consider trends over time (e.g. latest 3 financial years) as well as the underlying limitations of such analysis.  Note the companies have may have different year ends.

(c) Based on information collected from other sources (that is sources other than the company’s annual reports) outline other financial and non-financial factors that have impacted each Companys’s current state of affairs. In your discussion, you should make reference to the findings of your analysis identified in part (b).

(d) If you had to choose which company to invest in, either JBHi Fi and Challenger, which would you choose?  Justify who has performed better, in your discussion, you should make reference to the findings of your analysis identified in part (b).