This is an individual task that is designed to build your research, analysis and writing skills. This project will require you to use online databases to search and obtain announcements by companies, share price histories for companies and market wide information.
You will also utilise the key business desk top analysis tool, “Excel”, to manipulate the data you obtain to calculate, analyse and produce graphical representations of the key information.
You may like to refer to the course textbook by Horngren Accounting (8th Ed.), giving emphasis on the contents of Chapter 18 Financial Statement Analysis, to evaluate and put into context the factors behind the profit results announced by the company.
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Suggested Structure of Report
1. Title page
2. Objectives of the report
3. Overview of industry and company.
• A brief overview of the industry and your company is required to ‘set the scene’ for the reader.
4. Overview of the announcement and expected impact
• Introduce the announcement, give a succinct summary of the key financial and, if applicable, non-financial elements.
• Provide a justified expectation of the impact of the announcement on your company’s share price (up or down, good news/ bad news etc). Be sure to discuss what YOU THOUGHT should happen based on the announcement and not a rationalisation of what did happen
5. A discussion and analysis of the actual stock market reaction and calculation of residuals.
• What actually happened around the date the announcement was released to the share price of your company and its competitors.
• Use your residual calculations to support your observations.
• Explain what the residual graph is presenting to the audience.
• This section will include the presentation of your cumulative residual graphs with a discussion on their importance and usefulness.
• If not what was expected, what are some reasons for the difference?
• Does the industry your company and its competitors operate affect the residual results or expectations?
• You can include information from company announcements, reports, news articles, graphs etc. to support your discussion.
• Any graphs that appear within the body of the report require appropriate formatting and labels.
• You do not need to include tables of formulas from Excel in your written report.
6. conclusion
• Your conclusion should address your report’s objectives and be fully supported by your report content. Do not introduce new ideas in the conclusion.
Other factors affecting your grade include:
7. References and appendices
• APA style is preferred. Referencing guides can be found at: http://www.bond.edu.au/library/tools/cite/index.html
• Your attention is drawn to the faculty’s plagiarism policy, which is accessed through the Bond website.
• Appendices are graphs, tables and other supporting data that are supplementary to the main discussion but do not belong in the main body of the report.
8. Presentation and writing style
• Is your report appropriately formatted, written and presented (for example, 12 point font, 1.5 line spacing)?
• Does the report have a suitable flow and structure?
• Have you used the correct terminology and vocabulary in context?
• Are your graphs, tables, pictures and/or figures readable, labelled and used appropriately?
• Have you corrected minor errors in your report during the proof reading process?
• Exceeding the word count may result in penalties.
