Part 1 – Report (50% of assessment mark) Scenario: You are a financial analyst and you have been hired by a group of risk averse investors with limited knowledge (i.e. your "target audience") to prepare a written report.

The written report is to provide a recommendation as to whether the investors should buy more Virgin shares, sell their current holdings, or hold their current holdings until a later

date. Task: Your group is to prepare a report of no more than 2,500 words. A 10% allowance of this

word limit is allowed to acknowledge the inclusion of in-text references and appendices – note: appendices are for the reader's/marker's reference and do not provide additional marks, however lack of appendices may result in lower marks. The word limit excludes the

executive summary which itself should not exceed 250 words.

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to test students' ability to scope, synthesise and evaluate information for investors' decision making. It asks students to appreciate the context

and operations of a real company. Students will need to thoroughly research and reference their work including all company reports that have been used. In general, attention must be

given to not only summarising 'facts' about the case study company (and competitors), but critically analysing past performance, current trends and forming strongly reasoned

recommendationsfor investment decision making. Quality of arguments, the way information

is used to justify evaluations, and the soundness (viability) of recommendations for the target audience will be important for scoring higher marks.

Analysis and recommendations: In preparing your recommendation, you can use any of the analytical approaches/tools/methods learnt in this course. As part of developing professional

judgement, and application of this judgement, students will need to evaluate which analytical approaches/tools/methods they decide to apply (or not to apply) and why.

1 of 8 Furthermore, the report should appraise which approaches/tools/methods produce results which are weighted more in forming recommendations to investors. As a purely hypothetical

example, you may use 2 different analytical models to discuss the competitive context of Virgin Australia. However, the 2 models may yield slightly contradictory results in terms of

your recommendation for investors. Therefore, as an analyst, you will need to choose which model to rely on the most in forming your opinions about the company. Thus, this task is not about applying as many different frameworks as possible, but deciding

on which best suit the analysis required to satisfy the decision making needs of the target audience. Importantly, this is an applied task, so your report should not aim to give a discourse

of theory (e.g. – dedicating several paragraphs purely to defining/explaining what cost leadership or differentiation is, or purely explaining the steps in accounting analysis). You will

need to synthesise your understanding of theory through your analysis of Virgin Australia. Structure: You should prepare a report which is structured appropriately (e.g. – Executive Summary, Introduction, Report Body, Findings, Recommendation, Appendices) and care

should be taken to ensure each element of the report is also structured appropriately and of a reasonable length given the word limit. This report should be in the form of a professional

report as opposed to an academic report and each element of the report should be used accordingly (e.g. appendices should be used for calculations, data, etc..., and not as a

repository for write-up/information which could not be fit into the body of the report given the word limit). Please ensure you reference all sources of evidence including company data appropriately using the Harvard UniSA referencing style: