1. OVERVIEW
The Board of Directors of Wesfarmers (‘WES’ on the
Australian Stock Exchange) has tasked the
Finance Director of the Coles Division of WES with the
analysis of an Energy Efficiency related
initiative. The initiative stems from WES’s corporate sustainability
principles and the objective to reduce
carbon emissions by direct abatement. Your group is a team of Coles management
accountants, assigned to assist the Coles Finance Director (i.e., your CMA
Lecturer) by performing the required financial analysis. The initiative is
fully outlined in Appendix One of this document.
Your group must submit and present your financial analysis
in three formats:
A. Excel – financial modelling
B. Word – written report
C. PowerPoint – for presentation in-class (5 minutes per
group).
Extracts from the Excel financial modelling are to be
included in your Word report and PowerPoint
presentation.
2. EXCEL
The Finance Director (i.e., your Lecturer) will review your
financial modelling. They will need to be
very comfortable with your technical execution. Like many senior
managers, (s)he is extremely time poor
and needs to be communicated to very concisely. (S)he needs to quickly
understand the design of your models, as well as assumptions and limitations.
You will email your Excel file to your lecturer for review.
Here is what the Finance Director will
expect to see:
• The model is clearly structured, with supporting tables in
separate tabs that build-up from a
detailed breakdown.
• Input and output tables are clear and separate.
• Tables logically present key components (e.g., costs,
benefits, EBIT, assumptions and
parameters).
• The model is materially complete and comprehensive.
• The model is technically correct, e.g., cash flows are on
an after-tax basis and treatments are
conventional.
• Excel extracts used in the written report or PowerPoint
presentation should be appropriately
formatted, e.g., present figures in $M (e.g., $0.18M for $180,000).
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CMA – GROUP ASSIGNMENT
3. WORD
Remember, the Finance Director is your audience, so focus on
the numbers. It should be very clear what the document is about, what the
analysis implies, and what recommendations you are making (if any) for future progression of the
initiative.
You will lose marks if you include superfluous information.
The Finance Director is highly knowledgeable about the business and will be
irritated by time wasted reading an unfocussed report. Your report must present
only pertinent information and key aspects of the financial modelling.
This is a business style report for a non-academic
‘insider’. It must provide concise and easily readable information to aid
decision-making. It must include explanation of major conceptual points with simple definitions and explanation of
relevant terminology (especially operational matters) and complexities). The Finance Director is often
unfamiliar with operational issues.
You MUST INCLUDE an Executive Summary. Assume that your
report will be sent to the CEO so it
must be comprehensive and describe the ‘big picture’ and the main
‘numbers’ (e.g., EBIT, Capex, NPV, IRR).
The structure should also include Introduction, Discussion of Key Findings, and
Conclusion. The Cover Page should not include the Executive Summary.
The Finance Director will expect your report to:
• analyse and discuss the information, and evaluate it
critically.
• identify problems and suggest solutions.
• speculate about future trends and impacts.
The writing style must be a non-academic report - see the
Guide to writing assignments issued by the
UTS Business School: www.uts.edu.au/node/50946/
An appropriate report format will include headings,
sub-headings, bullet-points, tables and figures. It must be easy for the Finance Director to
understand the structure, and be able to selectively read sections of the whole
report rather than the whole thing from start to finish. Although the report is
to be in a non-academic style, you must reference appropriately and you
absolutely must not plagiarise.
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