FIN 700 Final Project Guidelines and Rubric

Overview

The final project for this course is the creation of a financial analysis and planning report, including a presentation to the executive management team.

Sound financial decisions are the foundation of business success. Financial managers, analysts, and consultants must continually adjust to changing market conditions and make well-informed, strategic choices regarding where and how to best allocate companies’ resources to produce and position products and increase value. As the final step in your journey toward your Master of Finance degree, your capstone project will highlight the knowledge and skills you have developed throughout your coursework that allow you to effectively perform these functions.

The capstone will have two components. For the first component, you will develop a financial analysis and planning report for the executive management team  at a large, publicly traded, multinational company where you will assume that you work. You will examine market conditions, the financial performance of the organization, and its projected growth, and then, based on your analysis, recommend strategies for risk management and potential investment over a three-year time horizon. In the second component, you will communicate the major findings of your report to the executive management team of the company through a brief PowerPoint presentation or equivalent (with speaker notes). Together, these capstone components will demonstrate your unique abilities, talents, and expertise in finance as well as your capacity to improve an organization’s performance through well-supported financial decisions.

Evaluation of Capstone

This capstone will be assessed somewhat differently than other courses you have taken online at SNHU. There are two components that operate together to comprise the whole capstone experience and are not assessed separately. You will be evaluated on both components as a unit in determining whether you have demonstrated proficiency in each outcome. Your work is expected to meet the highest professional standards.

The project is divided into four milestones, which will be submitted at various points throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality final submissions. These milestones will be submitted in Modules Two, Three, Five, and Seven. The final submission for Capstone Component 1 and Capstone Component 2 is due in Module Nine.

In this assignment you will demonstrate your mastery of the following course outcomes:

·       Analyze and evaluate long-term corporate investment opportunities to increase shareholder value

·       Implement theories of asset allocation, security analysis, and portfolio diversification to efficiently manage an investment portfolio

·       Formulate testable hypotheses and conduct statistical tests using financial data to inform strategic corporate decision-making

·       Evaluate and interpret the effect of macroeconomic events and financial market conditions on the firm’s strategic objectives

·       Utilize the tools of risk management in corporate management and portfolio management to effectively balance the relationship between risk and return

Prompt

Assume you are a senior financial manager at a major multinational corporation. (You may select any major multinational corporation of interest as long as it is publicly traded on a major U.S. stock exchange. Your choice should be approved by the instructor early in the course.) In preparation for an upcoming strategic planning meeting, you have been asked to review the company’s financial performance, analyze market conditions to predict its future performance, and make recommendations regarding potential investment opportunities and managing risk. To prepare for the meeting, you will create two artifacts to share with the rest of the executive management team: a background financial analysis and planning report, supported by appropriate data analysis and forecasting, and a brief presentation (with speaker notes) highlighting your key findings and recommendations. You may make reasonable assumptions regarding company details, as needed, to inform your suggestions. However, you must specify these assumptions and explain why they are reasonable clearly in your report and presentation.

Capstone Component 1: Financial Analysis and Planning Report

For Component 1 of your capstone, you will develop a comprehensive financial analysis and planning report that lays out your firm’s current and projected financial performance in light of market conditions. Your report should also suggest potential investment opportunities and strategies for managing risk for the executive management team to discuss in strategic planning.

In order to provide an appropriate context for your analysis and recommendations, you should look at your company’s financial performance over the past three years. (You may also include historical information prior to this time horizon if relevant. However, keep in mind that the report is not intended as a historical analysis of the company, but rather as a tool for strategic planning.) You should also project forward at least three years in your modeling and recommendations for the future.

Remember that you are communicating to the executive leadership team, so your report should be succinct, clear, and well supported throughout by credible research and evidence, including relevant spreadsheets, charts, and graphs.

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

I.       Executive Summary: Briefly provide the “bottom line” of your financial analysis and key recommendations to a busy executive audience.

II.     Current Financial Status: Analyze the position of the firm and whether the company regressed or improved financially over the past three years. Be sure to situate your company within the broader economy and its specific industry, particularly with respect to major competitors and industry and market trends. Your analysis, supported by relevant spreadsheets and graphs, must include, but need not be limited to, the following:

A.     Liquidity

B.     Efficiency

C.     Profitability

D.     Market Value

E.     Leverage

III.    Projections: Based on the company’s financial statements, your analysis, and any additional evidence, project the company’s performance for the next three years. Are there any areas of concern? Is the company in good financial shape for moving forward? Discuss a best-case, worst-case, and most likely scenario, including a sustainable growth rate for sales based on existing financial statements and any macroeconomic and financial market conditions that might impact the firm’s strategic objectives. You must thoroughly address the assumptions behind your predictions, supported by spreadsheet calculations. At a minimum, your analysis must cover:

A.     Weight of equity

B.     Weight of debt

C.     Cost of debt

D.     Cost of equity

E.     Tax rate

F.     Value of the company’s stock compared to your forecasted value and free cash flow

IV.   International Market Analysis: Articulate the company’s position with respect to at least one of the foreign markets in which it operates. Use statistical regression to predict the exchange rates for the next year. How does the company manage foreign exchange risks, and what, if anything, might it do differently?

V.     Recommendations: Provide high-level, strategic recommendations for your company for the upcoming three years, based on your analysis and interpretations. Where are there opportunities for growth? What risks does the company face, and how might it mitigate them? Apply relevant principles of asset allocation and portfolio diversification in making your suggestions, and assess the risks and returns for each individually, as well as the group of suggestions as a whole. You should also consider how changing market conditions might affect your recommendations and how the recommendations fit with the company’s investment needs and priorities.

Capstone Component 2: Presentation to Executive Management Team

For the second and final component of your capstone, you will create a summary presentation that conveys the key points of your analysis and recommendations to members of the executive management team. The summary presentation will take the form of a visual presentation with speaker notes, such as a PowerPoint presentation or other instructor-approved medium, designed to reinforce the presentation skills you will need as a finance professional and in showcasing your skills in job interviews.

Like the executive summary for your paper, your presentation should provide fellow members of the executive team with a concise overview of the company’s current and projected financial performance. In particular, you should focus on key assumptions and findings that will help the company navigate complex international financial environments and how your findings and assumptions impact future planning and stakeholder value.

Remember that while your audience wants to know you have thoroughly analyzed the company’s finances, they do not want a verbatim or lengthy repetition of the information in the background paper. Instead, you should strategically select the key messages and level of detail based on your audience, bearing in mind the key information they will want to know and the types of concerns they are likely to have, and anticipating the types of questions they are likely to ask.

Milestone Four: Executive Summary and Recommendations

(Work on Milestone 4 only! As I will request for a separate order for Milestone Final Submission later on.)

In Module Seven, you will submit a draft of your Executive Summary (Component 1: Section I) and Recommendations (Component 1: Section V). You provide the “bottom line” of your financial analysis and key recommendations to a busy executive audience. Provide high-level, strategic recommendations for your company for the upcoming three years, based your analysis and interpretations. Where are there opportunities for growth? What risks does the company face, and how might it mitigate them? Apply relevant principles of asset allocation and portfolio diversification in making your suggestions, and assess the risks and returns for each individually as well as the group of suggestions as a whole. You should also consider how changing market conditions might affect your recommendations and how the recommendations fit with the company’s investment needs and priorities.

This milestone is graded with the Milestone Four Rubric.

The final submission will be graded using the Final Project Rubric.

Deliverables

Final Project Rubric

This rubric will be applied to both components as a whole and neither component will be assessed on its own. The “Possible Indicators of Success” are examples for you and the instructor of the types of concepts to look for to demonstrate proficiency. They are neither exhaustive nor proscriptive and should be used as guides for illustrating how your capstone embodies the outcome. All outcomes are weighted equally.

Your financial analysis and planning report should be approximately 15–20 pages long (excluding graphs, tables, references, and appendices) and should include a title page and table of contents. The report should be double-spaced, with one-inch margins and 12-point Times New Roman font, and conform to the most recent APA format and citation style.

Your presentation to the executive management team should be approximately 10–12 slides (or slide equivalents) long and include speaker notes sufficient to give the audience a clear, but concise, understanding of the company’s financial performance and suggested steps moving forward. Your instructor must approve the software you plan to use for the presentation early in the course to ensure that your instructor will be able to access the content.