Category: Essays

Baleno : Expanding Retail Operations In China

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Your task as a financial analyst is to prepare a capital budgeting report to Mr Harvey and executive committee of Goodhealth Drinks Company indicating whether the firm should accept or reject the lemonade project

Your task as a financial analyst is to prepare a capital budgeting report to Mr Harvey and executive committee of Goodhealth Drinks Company indicating whether the firm should accept or reject the lemonade project. You are also required to provide summaries of the risk analyses for sensitive variables and break-even sales volume and prices.

Fundamentals of Value Creation
Assignment Instructions
Goodhealth Drinks Company was formed in 1985 and is a leading producer of fresh, frozen and made-from- concentrate citrus drinks is Australia. The company’s founder, Mr Charles Harvey invested in citrus land located in the south-west region of Western Australia. Mr Harvey initially sold his oranges and grapefruit to wholesalers but when juice sales were expanding, he joined with several other producers to form Goodhealth Drinks Company, which then expanded into juice processing. By 2010, the company had a sales turnover of over $10 million with profits with excess of $ 1 million.
Goodhealth’s management is currently evaluating a new product, fresh lemonade. The new product will cost more, but is superior to competing lemonade products made from reconstituted lemon juice. As a recent business school graduate working as a financial analyst at Goodhealth, you must analyse the project and present the findings to the company’s executive committee.
Production facilities for the fresh lemonade line would be set up in an unused section of Goodhealth’s main plant. Relatively inexpensive used machinery with an estimated cost of $500,000 would be purchased, but shipping and installation charges will add another $50,000 to the total equipment cost. Inventory will have to be increased by $20,000 at the start of the first year, then by 10% p.a. thereafter. The machinery has a remaining economic life of 4 years, and the company expects to apply a straight-line depreciation schedule. At the end of 4 years, the machinery is expected to have a $40,000 salvage value.
The section of the plant where the lemonade production would occur has been unused for several years and consequently has suffered some deterioration. As part of a routine facilities improvement program, Goodhealth spent $80,000 to rehabilitate that section of the plant last year. The accountant, Mr Kevin Smith, believes this outlay which has already been paid for an expensed for tax purposes, should be charged to the lemonade project. His contention is that if the rehabilitation had not taken place, the firm would have to spend $80,000 to make the site suitable for the lemonade project. Smith also informed you that a neighbouring citrus processor had expressed an interest in leasing the lemonade production site for 4 years. The terms of the lease agreement would be a fixed rental of $10,000 p.a. payable in advance and a deposit of one-year rent as bond would be returned at the end of the lease.
The company expects to sell 350,000 cartons of the new lemonade product in each of the next 4 years at a price of $4.50 per carton, but $2.00 per carton would be needed to cover the fixed and variable cash operating costs. The company will also set aside $15,000 for additional advertising expenses for this new product line. While examining the sales figures, you noted a short memo from Goodhealth’s sales manager expressing concern that the fresh lemonade project would cut into the firm’s existing sales of frozen lemonade. Specifically, the sales manager estimated that frozen lemonade sales would fall by 5% if fresh lemonade were introduced. You then talked to both the sales and production managers, and they concluded that the new project would probably lower the firm’s frozen lemonade sales by $50,000 p.a. but at the same time, it would also reduce production costs for frozen lemonade by $35,000 p.a., all on a pre-tax basis.
Goodhealth is a private company, soundly financed and consistently profitable. Cash on hand is not sufficient to buy the used machinery. However, Mr Harvey is confident that part of the project’s cost can be financed with medium-term debt, privately placed with an insurance company. Goodhealth had borrowed via a private placement once before when it negotiated a fixed rate of 10% p.a. on a five-year loan. Preliminary dicsussions with Goodhealth’s bankers led Mr Harvey to believe that the firm could arrange a four-year 12% p.a. medium- term loan with repayment of fixed annual interest expense and the principal owing at maturity. The company’s tax rate is 30%.
At present, the company’s total assets on the balance sheet amount to $5 million. Of this, $2 million comprises of the five-year loan with an interest charge of 10% p.a. The principal of this loan is due to be repaid in three years. The balance of assets is funded by equity, and shareholders have a required rate of return of 16% p.a. If the fresh lemonade project is undertaken, the firm will borrow $250,000 via the second medium-term loan under the
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terms specified above. The balance of the necessary funds will be provided from retained earnings. The added liability on the firm’s balance sheet is expected to raise shareholder’s required rate of return by 1 percentage point.
The executive committee wants to see some type of risk analysis on the project as it might be profitable, but there are chances that it might turn out to be a loser. You met with the marketing and production managers to get a feel for the uncertainties involved in the cash flow estimates. After several sessions, they concluded that the following variations on the original estimates should be considered: • Unit sales can rise by about +20% if market conditions are optimistic, or fall by about -20% if market conditions are pessimistic. • Depending on consumer trends and competition, the firm can raise the $4.50 sale price by +10% (after year 1) under optimistic estimates, or be forced to decrease the sale price by -10% under pessimistic estimates. • Inventory costs are largely influenced by crop yields, and could vary by -20% p.a. and +20% p.a. under optimistic and pessimistic conditions respectively. • The salvage value of the machine is also uncertain. At best, the firm may be able to dispose of the asset for $80,000 but there is also a likelihood the firm cannot find a buyer for the machinery at all.
After reviewing the data provided, you realise that the revenue and cost figures have not been adjusted for inflation which is expected to average 5% p.a. over the next 4 years. Specifically, the sales price of $4.50 per carton is expected to increase at a rate of 5% p.a. after Year 1. On the other hand, operating costs, inventory and advertising expenses are expected to increase at a rate of 2% p.a. from the initial cost estimates because these are largely fixed by contracts.
Your task as a financial analyst is to prepare a capital budgeting report to Mr Harvey and executive committee of Goodhealth Drinks Company indicating whether the firm should accept or reject the lemonade project. You are also required to provide summaries of the risk analyses for sensitive variables and break-even sales volume and prices. Address the following:
1. Estimate the appropriate Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) applicable as the project’s required rate of return.
2. Prepare the incremental cash flow table for the fresh lemonade project over the first four years of operations based on annual sales quantity of 350,000 cartons. Include adjustments for inflation in your cash flow projections. Discuss if the following items should be included (or excluded) in the cash flow statement: (a) The interest expenses on the $250,000 loan; (b) The $80,000 spent to rehabilitate the plant; (c) The reduction in Goodhealth’s frozen lemonade sales and associated production costs; and (d) Opportunity of leasing the lemonade production site for $10,000 per year.
3. Assume the company uses a payback rule with a cut-off period of two years. What are the payback period, net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR) and profitability index (PI) of this project? Should the project be undertaken based on each of the investment evaluation methods? Discuss.
4. Evaluate the sensitivities of the project’s NPV against variations to: unit sales, sales price per carton, inventory costs, and the salvage value. Advise management which two variables will need to be scrutinised carefully if the project is implemented.
5. Determine the break-even sales volume and break-even sales price in order for this project to be viable, under the expected cash flow projections.
6. Suggest two possible risks or opportunities that may impact the feasibility of continuing with the fresh lemonade line after 4 years. Discuss two project options the firm could consider which can impact your earlier valuation of the project.
Marking Guide
Question 1 WACC calculation
6 marks
Question 2 Discussions Incremental cash flow table
4 marks 15 marks
Question 3 Project evaluation and discussion
5 marks
Question 4 Sensitivity analysis Discussion of results
8 marks 2 marks
Question 5 Break-even sales volume Break-even sales price
2 marks 2 marks
Question 6 Discussion of risks, opportunities and project options
6 marks
Marked out of 50, scaled to 25% of final grade
Document Formatting
1. Your discussions should not exceed 1000 words (4 pages). This is based on a 12pt. Times New Roman font with 1.5 pt paragraph spacing. 2. Turnitin only accepts the submission of one document. Copy all Excel tables and paste them as a picture (JPEG) in your Word document. This minimises the chance of a viewing error after uploading on Turnitin.
A template for what your submission should comprise of…
An executive summary (the body of your discussions) This section is should be an arrangement of your discussions from your analysis. Clearly state: – your recommendations to management of Goodhealth Drinks Company on whether the firm should proceed with the investment project, based on the findings of PB, NPV, IRR and PI. – your assumptions on items included and excluded from the incremental cash flow analysis and why (as per Question 2). – advise to management on which variables the project’s success is most sensitive to and the relevant break-even levels (as per Questions 4 and 5). – potential risks and opportunities of the firm going beyond 4 years with the product, and suggest two project options which have not been considered but can impact the valuation of the investment (as per Question 6).
Supporting calculations (your workings) All relevant tables and cash flow workings should be attached at the back of your document. These must correspond to your discussions. Ensure information is neatly and clearly presented. Your grader will evaluate the calculations as per what is presented in the document. So make sure that whichever Excel workings you deem suitable to include are visible in the Word report.

 

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“A Rose for Emily”: Explain who the narrator of the story seems to be and how the narrator’s point of view influences our opinion of Miss Emily and of the people of the town of Jefferson.

You might begin by trying to figure out if the narrator seems to be an individual or somehow speaks for the town as a whole (“we”).

Process

1. Once you have picked a topic, reread the story. As you read, keep you topic in mind. Also, whenever you find evidence in the text that might help you answer the question, mark it so you can find it later.

2. Formulate a tentative thesis. Try to write this thesis out in a single sentence if possible. If that’s not possible, don’t worry, but do try to write down the thesis.

3. Consider how best to organize your evidence. For example, would it make sense to divide the story into stages or sections, and deal with each one at a time, perhaps in separate paragraphs. Or if the question itself has more than one part, should you address one idea first and then the other? If you’re writing on the Hemingway story, would it make better sense to discuss one character first and then the other, or to discuss them together as they appear at different stages in the story? In other words, break your response to the question into parts, if you can.

4. Once you’ve divided the task into its parts, draft each part as at least one separate paragraph; some parts may require more than a paragraph. Each of these parts of the paper should have a claim of its own to argue, a claim that helps you prove your general claim about the story. In each paragraph, you should explain how the evidence in the story supports your claim. Note that simply quoting or referring to the evidence will not be sufficient: you need to explain to your reader what conclusion he/she should be drawing from that evidence. If you’d like models for such paragraphs, there are several sample student essays in our textbook on pp. 260, 1365, and 1368. Consult the document on How to Use Quotations in the Course Documents for more information on properly formatting quotes.

5. At this point you should have a first draft of the paper. You will share this draft with several other students and the instructor, who will make suggestions. Ideally, you should not look at it yourself for a couple of days. When you do pick it up again, try to read it over as if you were a reader who had never seen it before (this is hard to do!). Consider the following general features of the draft:

· Do you agree with the thesis?

· Is the thesis clearly stated? Are there any terms used that are vague or could be more clearly defined?

· Does the evidence presented support the thesis?

· Can you recall evidence from the story that might contradict the thesis?

· Can you recall additional evidence from the story that might support the thesis?

· Is it easy to follow the connections between paragraphs? Does each paragraph clearly support the thesis of the whole paper?

· Are individual paragraphs easy to read? Are they each unified around a single topic or claim, or do some try to do too much?

· Is all evidence clearly explained? Will the reader be able to see how it supports the conclusions drawn from it?

6. Based on the feedback you get from others and your own rereading of the draft, revise the draft.

7. Once you have revised the draft, edit it: make sure sentences are clear and grammatical, check spelling, etc. Your computer can help you do some but not all of this work, so be sure to read it over yourself before handing it in.

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Bank Failure in 1390’s: Using community based resources, special collections and archives, research and identify the different threads in a larger discussion that centers on a single aspect of life or culture in one local community in the 1930’s

Using community based resources, special collections and archives, research and identify the different threads in a larger discussion that centers on a single aspect of life or culture in one local community in the 1930’s.The community could be a local neighborhood, the city of Seattle, Washington State, or the Pacific Northwest.

You will need to find and familiarize yourself with many different kinds of texts related to your topic and from those conversations you will need to choose which ones you want to present to us and explain why. In your final paper:

Analyze how these different conversations in this one topic relate to each.
Compare the conversations you find to the primary evidence you from that time period.
As you conclude, go beyond summarizing your main points to create a synthesis of your ideas. In other words, explain how your points interact with each other.
Do not write about a broad subject. Narrow your working topic to one important subject within a larger topic. Explain any unique words or phrases and any complex details. Analyze your research by critically evaluating the evidence for your readers.

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Discuss the role of women in Christianity from a period of your choice (early, patristic, medieval, reformation, or modern).

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Need to write up about the contingency theory and relate it to Toyota.
o Description of Contingency Theory
o Analysis of Toyota using Contingency Theory
o Recommendations based on Contingency Theory

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Compare the American Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Revolt. Infer about its main characters. Consider their stance and compare to another civil rights activists. How clear are the ideas? what strikes yours particularly important about a particular leader? Opinion of Malcolm X in comparison to other civil rights leaders/activists.(Martin luther King, Stokely carmichael, Black Panthers)

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Identify: EITHER any activity you carry out or have witnessed or know or have read about, OR any safety event you have witnessed, heard about, or read about. If you select an activity, predict and analyse the potential risks of accidents or other harmful outcomes in terms of possible errors. If you select an event or accident which has occurred then analyse this incident itself in terms of the human and organisational errors which occurred. This could also be an opportunity to align coursework with future career plans, i.e., look at issues in the domain you intend to work in after graduation (oil & gas, construction, etc).

Your analysis should include use of several of the methods and representational forms covered in this class. These could include, but are not restricted to: risk matrices; task or function analyses; accident models (such as linear flow charts, epidemiological and ergonomics frameworks, swiss cheese, event tree, fault tree, bow tie); human error identification/quantification systems (such as HAZOP, GEMS, TRACEr, HEART etc).
The activity or event analysed could include: everyday activities such as driving, bike riding, cooking etc); special activities known to you (sailing, skiing, pot holing etc); activities of family or friends or that you have read about or imagine; activities you can observe (bus driving, construction worker, club security etc); incidents or accidents that you have experienced; incidents or accidents that you have read about. You may find it more interesting and a richer and easier exercise if the activity/incident you take has a combination of physical, cognitive and social components, but at the same time should not be so large and diffuse that you cannot focus.

The coursework could include: a text description of th e activity or incident; some task/activity/function description and analysis (ie what should be done); an analysis of the potential (or actual) human and organisational errors involved (active and latent); a breakdown of the types of these errors; possibly some idea as to likelihood (ie maybe some quantification); a justification for the approach and tools you have used; and your view as to their value and ease of use – or otherwise!

However, the intention of this coursework is to give practice in using tools and analysing/assessing risks and human reliability/error, and in seeing how difficult this is to do, so there is no one right or wrong way to go about this assignment. I will be interested in what you come up with. It gives an opportunity to try the various approaches and tools looked at in class to describe, represent and analyse activities, tasks, incidents/accidents and actual organisation failure and human error or potential for these. I am mainly evaluating your knowledge, including understanding strengths and limitations, of what approaches are appropriate and tools and techniques available, and how to use and report these. Once you have decided on your topic/focus and possibly tools and techniques I am happy to quickly give advice in a break from the class or just afterwards. Where you use any relevant literature, published sources in journal articles and books should be cited and fully referenced. Whilst web resources can be cited these should not be the majority of sources and these need full details of location and date accessed.

The assignment should be of between 5 and 10 pages. The majority should be graphical or tabular analyses. Text will account for at most 25% of the final grade and should be roughly in the range of 500-1000 words. Since producing graphical charts on computer may not be easy for all of you I would accept legible hand drawn ones.

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Write a briefing paper outlining three policy options the USA could pursue to facilitate stability and security in Yemen over the next five years. Make a recommendation of which of these options is most preferable including detailed reasoning for your choice.

In completing this assignment, you must remember to:

Keep in mind the perspective of the United States
Adhere to the USA’s general policies towards the region
Be realistic about what the USA and its allies would be willing to undertake from a foreign and domestic point of view. (e.g. recommending a full scale invasion of Yemen would be unrealistic.)
A traditional essay style is not required for this assignment, though you must still provide evidence for your arguments and you should present your briefing paper in an appropriately formal style.

1.Word length must be strictly observed (3000 words). (This total does not include your bibliography and a ±10% margin is acceptable.)
2.You should use at least ten sources and cite them.
3.Use the Oxford system of referencing with footnotes For assistance with Oxford referencing, see http://www.deakin.edu.au/current-students/study-support/study-skills/handouts/oxford-docnote.php
3.Use direct quotations sparingly, and seek to outline ideas in your own words.The use of other authors’ ideas or words without acknowledgement (plagiarism) is unacceptable and will result in a failure for this piece of assessment.
4.The paper must be well structured; introduce, outline, and conclude a consistent argument that directly answers the question you are investigating.
5.Each paper must include a bibliography.
Please submit your paper as a Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) document. (Other software such as Apple’s Pages word processor cannot be read by the TurnItIn plagiarism system and are therefore not acceptable.)

NOTE:
There is no specific format for a briefing paper. You will see from the DFAT link below that even within the same organisation there can be differences in the way an analyst puts together a briefing. You may use sections, sub-headings and bullet points. You may even use graphical objects such as charts and graphs. However, be sparing with these, because ultimately we want you to produce a piece of persuasive writing, not a monthly sales report.

The tone of the briefing paper should be formal. Remember, this briefing paper may end up before the Secretary of State or even the President.

Some Examples:
http://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/catalogue/pub_bycountry.html

An example from another unit This was submitted by a student in AIE364 last year and received a High Distinction. The link is below copy and paste.
https://d2l.deakin.edu.au/content/enforced/212076-AIE255_TRI-1_2014/briefing%20paper%20student.pdf?_&d2lSessionVal=DxPxpYwBfvOzwNFnuMsf7S0a1&ou=212076

Use the Oxford system of referencing with footnotes For assistance with Oxford referencing, see http://www.deakin.edu.au/current-students/study-support/study-skills/handouts/oxford-docnote.php
Each paper must include a bibliography
Refer to the upload materials for examples.

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Yale law student here. Embarrassingly.

Not looking for massive rewrites, just working this somewhat rambling set of paragraphs into a coherent paper.

Having a clear, coherent structure is the best. I’m having trouble with that last part. Want to make sure readers can follow (I’d also just appreciate comments on anything you don’t understand.)

Tone: Conversational is good. Rigorous, but not excessively academic.

If anybody can do bluebook citations I would be SO grateful, but I can of course just do that myself. I just haven’t slept for, like 3 days and am running out of steam.

THE PAPER (Basic gist of what I’m trying to say):

Background:
Right after Snowden the government released (and everybody fixated on) this 54 attacks prevented figure. While its intially compelling, its really the wrong way to measure the value of intelligence.

Months later, the Privacy and civil liberties oversight board released its report on the 215 metadata program. Their goal was to determine effectiveness and assess privacy implications — and even though they noted that “attacks prevented” is a bad way to measure value of intelligence… their analysis basically falls into the same trap.

Everybody seems to want a better way to guage value, but nobody really knows what that is. (all of this is the intro)

(then I want a paragraph explaining what the paper aims to do — the current one is not usable as it doesn’t actually describe what the paper goes on to say!)

Foundational question: why is it hard to find good metrics for intelligence?
Basically because its predictive (so the goal is non-events), collaborative (hard to asses any particular program in isolation), and any possible outcomes are really remote from the creation of the intelligence. (Plenty of good intelligence, in other words, doesn’t prevent attacks..)

With that in mind,
Is it even POSSIBLE to measure intelligence using outcome metrics (attacks prevented, early warning)?
– Lots of people in the intelligence community seem to think its not,
– Outcome metrics are also seen as counterproductive in similar areas like scientific research and industrial R&D departments. Like intelligence, these things aren’t closely collected to the final outcomes they hope to produce.

So,
If we shouldn’t measure intelligence based on outcomes (whether it prevents an attack), what kinds of things SHOULD we measure? What qualities would a good metric have?
-probably should be really closely tied to process
-responsive to the specific goals of a program (metadata collection, for instance, aimed to increase speed)]

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