Annual Report of an organization’s financial and operational standing
Business Finance
Scenario: For this assignment, you and your partner(s) will assume the role of third-party financial advisors. In doing so, you’ll evaluate an annual report of an organization’s financial and operational standing, for fiscal year 2017, and present your findings and recommendation to a group of prospective investors (i.e. your audience). Your job is to give an objective overview and then tell the audience whether they should buy stock in the company and why or why not. Your instructor will assign each group an annual report to review.
Task: Your task is to examine a company’s Annual Report (not the 10-K, though you can consult this document for data to prove your arguments about profitability or financial loss) and present an objective and straightforward analysis of the organization’s finances and operations for the 2017 fiscal year. You will need to focus on the facts and look beyond the marketing messages in your assigned Annual Report. You’ll need to communicate all info you report in a way that is easily understandable for a general audience. Provide definitions and context, as necessary, to help your audience understand the logic and content you’re presenting and analyzing.
Specific content requirements: prepare PPT slides to complement your clear and engaging oral explanations of the following:
- What products and services the company offered during the fiscal year, noting any growth/changes in these offerings from previous years.
- What operational changes took place that year (new locations, new management structure, etc.). Note if any of these changes will help or impede growth and/or offset adversity.
- What the overall financial performance was, including any notable changes from previous years. Make sure to address the company’s profitability.
- Close by making a recommendation as to whether the audience should invest in the company’s stock, and why or why not. This is the essential “takeaway” from your presentation, so it needs to be clear and explicit, but you shouldn’t need to introduce much (if any) new info here; instead, closings connect and ideas already laid out in the body of a message.
Note that you’ll need create at least one original visual piece of info (e.g. chart, graph, table, infographic) that you display and explain to your audience. This visual should be helpful in advancing and displaying one of the required topics above. To earn credit, please explicitly introduce the visual as being designed by you, before explaining and analyzing the content within.
Technical presentation requirements:
- Presentation must be 5 – 7 minutes.
- Use no more than 8 slides (not including a title/introduction slide).
- Each slide should include no more than six bullet points with up to six words per bullet point.
- Explain financial performance data/metrics in plain English.
- Use infographics and charts to illustrate and simplify this data for a general audience (these visuals may come directly from the annual report, but you’ll need to explain them thoroughly).
- You will not be allowed to use notes during your presentation.
Note about TEAM DYNAMICS
Please note an important grading criterion that didn’t apply to your earlier, solo, oral presentations this semester: “Team dynamics present and team is well rehearsed; seamless transitions and team is conscientious of each other’s speaking turns.”
In other words, your grade will depend on you showing — in your presentation — that you and your partner(s) have spent time practicing and preparing together. You should plan transitions between each other and have conversational rapport as you present. Your presentation will be far less engaging if you simply divide the content between speakers into a “first half” and “second half,” never showing your audience any kind of practiced team dynamics.
Learning to execute an effective, cohesive team presentation will be valuable for your upper level courses (especially capstone courses) and your career.
