(a) The stock can be found within the FactSet database

(b) The market capitalisation is within the largest 50 companies listed on that exchange

(c) The company has at least 3 years of complete financial data

You will be required to form groups of 2-4 students with your classmates in the same tutorial class starting in Week 4 (and continuing in Week 5) and then post your group’s selected company to the Discussion Forum on Moodle. This will open on Friday 4th October (Week 4) at 3pm for everyone. Your group is not allowed to analyse a company that has already been chosen by another group in this course. Thus, each group must select a different company – first come, first served.

1. Explain the current capital structure of your company. [10 marks]

• You may consider the distinct types and amounts of debt, hybrid, and equity instruments that this company has issued, its characteristics as well as other important details.

2. Explain the major revenue and expense sources of your company. [5 marks]

• You may consider different geographical segments that your company derives revenue and expenses, presenting a country/region map of revenue exposures as well as other important details.

3. Identify the main competitors of your company. [5 marks]

• You may consider the main competitors in the domestic market and relevant geographical segments as well as other important details.

4. Annotate a chart with the  last twelve months’ share price of your company (November 2023- October 2024). [15 marks]

• You  may  consider the  key  events which explain movements in the  share  price, macro- economic factors, company-specific events as well as other important details.

• You may consider overlaying this share price chart with a relevant market index over the same time period, justifying your choice and discussing its price behaviour.

• You may consider overlaying the price history of relevant competitor(s) over the same time period and discussing its price behaviour.

5. Describe two events that occurred in the past twelve months and how they have affected the share price and trading volumes of your company. [20 marks]

• You may consider key corporate actions, company announcements and other high impact news events. One of the events must have a positive surprise element and the other event must have a negative surprise element.

• You are not required to do any calculations for this description (e.g. (cumulative) abnormal returns,  market  returns  etc.)  but will need to identify the expected/consensus/forecast figure(s), actual figure(s), surprise (%) and/or price change (%) for each event.

• You may consider presenting a share price chart around this event  with other important details on the same chart.

6. Discuss  whether the  positive  or  negative event caused a bigger or smaller price and volume reaction than expected and whether the market behaviour was consistent with the efficient market hypothesis. [15 marks]

7. Based on your analysis in the above  parts,  propose (an) investment strategy(ies) for the asset managers at State Road Global Advisors. Justify your suggestion(s). [10 marks]

GROUP FORMATION:

The Major Assignment has two components – an individual presentation (due in Week 7) and a final written report and video recording (due in Week 10).

Students are free to form their own groups within the same tutorial with the condition that each group should have 2-4 members. Your tutor should have a record of the members in each group as well as your group number/name.

Since the goal of the Major Assignment is to provide an opportunity to gain team working skills in a safe environment, no individual submissions are allowed.

All members of the group will be initially awarded the same mark for the individual presentation, written report + video recording as they are expected to equally contribute to the final submission of the group.

GROUP DYNAMICS AND INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITIES:

Groupwork is one of the core Program Learning Outcomes at UNSW. Learning how to work in a new team is an essential skill in the workforce too.

As a group, you will be responsible for negotiating roles, managing your workloads and progress amongst the group. The group should collectively set out the expectations for each member’s workload clearly and to reduce any “free-rider” problems.

Individuals in groups should also work actively to overcome barriers that arise. However, any substantial problems in your group should be raised with your tutor as soon as possible.

Records of all communications, meeting attendances, task allocations, documents, work-in-progress, submission schedules etc should be kept by each group member.

Each group should set internal deadlines well before the presentation (in Week 7) and the written report and video recording (in Week 10) to ensure that there is sufficient time to compile, edit and communicate with each other before the deadline.

If a group believes that there is an evident and substantial disparity in contribution by any member, these groups may be able to engage in a peer assessment and moderation of grades for each individual in the group, at the discretion of the LIC. Peer reviews are undertaken on a case-by-case basis and require substantive evidence of both disparity in contribution and efforts to ameliorate any difficulties.

The Teaching Team will not resolve any group issues if there is no evidence that the group has tried to resolve these conflicts or barriers amongst themselves.

There  is a  universal  expectation that each student will  make  every effort to communicate clearly, contribute fairly and treat one another with the utmost respect.