Posted: December 2nd, 2022

Foundation of Financial and Management Accounting

Foundation of Financial and Management Accounting
IB9LA0
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Foundations of Financial and Management Accounting
Term One 2022-2023
WARWICK BUSINESS SCHOOL
25% 2
nd Reflection Note
1,500 words:
This is a strict limit not a guideline: any piece submitted with more words than the limit
will result in the excess not being marked
This is the guide for the follow-up reflection note, which accounts for 25% of the overall assessment
of this module. Your case company is Next PLC listed on the London Stock Exchange.
You are assessed based on your writing skills, the extent to which you understand the materials, and
critical Assessment of the case firm’s upside potentials and downside risks and the recent trading
conditions via DuPont analysis.
Good discussion should include relevant readings, critical reflection, as well as the analytic evidence
to support your arguments and assessment. It is recommended that you also incorporate any
opportunities and challenges that affect the case firm in your assessment.
The overall word count is 1,500 words. You are also required to provide full disclosure of the necessary
numerical demonstration and analyses in an appendix. Please do not go over the wordcount. Tables,
diagrams, references, and appendix are not part of wordcount. Finally, the standard University penalty
applies in this assessment. Please refer to your student handbook.
Task:
So far, you have had some ideas of Next’s recent operating outcomes from your first reflection note.
This follow-up reflection note requires you to critically evaluate Next’s operating strengths and
weaknesses and financial risk based on 5 factor DuPont model introduced in the module. Your
analysis should cover the accounting period from the year ended January 2019 to the year ended
January 2022, bearing in mind that there was an accounting standard revision (IFRS 16) in 2019 fiscal
year. The ratios involving the balance sheet items should be based on the average balance sheet
amounts for the relevant analysis.
The report must include the analysis of the following aspects:
1. Analyse the extent to which Next’s (1) working capital contributes to and (2) Capex supports
its core operations in order to maintain its competitive positioning. You must analyse and
evaluate the case firm’s working capital policies and growth strategy
[40 marks]
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2. Summarise Next’s operating strengths and how it manages and/or overcomes challenges. You
must connect the summary of the case firm’s operating outcomes from the first assignment
to the above working capital management and/or Capex plans with relevant well-edited
tables, diagrams, and/or graphs. Please pay attention to self-plagiarism, which is also a serious
academic misconduct.
[15 marks]
3. Evaluate Next’s financial risk. The analysis should incorporate free cash flows (FCF).
[10 marks]
4. A concluding remark [5 marks]
5. Demonstration of technical calculations in Appendix of the report. Do not attach excel files
with your assignment PDF file.
[20 marks]
6. Presentation, citations, and references. Particularly, all relevant figures and indicators in the
main body of the report should be nicely edited. Do not copy and paste from the original
sources.
[10 marks]
Note: The students are assessed based on writing skills, ability to conduct independent research, and
the extent to which the materials covered in the module up to the submission date are adequately
applied. Good discussion should include relevant readings as well as the analytic evidence to support
your arguments and assessment.
1. You must demonstrate the understanding of the information provided by financial
statement.
2. You must demonstrate an adequate level of readings in articulating the key points required
by the assignment guide.
3. You must demonstrate sound technical skills based on DuPont analysis.
4. You must demonstrate the ability to conduct the basic research independently regarding the
case firm’s operating performance, using legitimate sources of information, such as news
media and the databases in the University library
5. You must demonstrate the ability to use Excel and Word.
6. The assignment must be well presented and well-edited. It is ideal to provide table, graphs,
diagrams
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 12:00 (UK time) Tuesday 13 December 2022
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Word Count Policy and Formatting (found in your Masters Student Handbook Section 6.2c)
Guidelines for Online Submission (found in your Masters Student Handbook Section 6.2e)
The submission deadline is precise and uploading of the document must be completed before 12.00 (UK time)
on the submission date. Any document submitted even seconds later than 12.00 precisely will be penalised for
late submission in line with WBS policy. Please consult your student handbook on my.wbs for more detailed
information.
The online assignment submission system will only accept documents in portable documents format (PDF)
files. Please note that we will not accept PDF files of scanned documents. You should create your assignment
in your chosen package (for example, Word), then convert it straight to PDF before uploading. Please place
your student ID number, NOT YOUR NAME, on the front of your submission as all submissions are marked
anonymously.
All the scripts should also have the following paragraph included on the front page:
PLEASE ENSURE YOU KEEP A SECURITY COPY OF YOUR ASSESSMENT
Your Academic Writing and Avoiding Plagiarism Module on my.wbs has lots of useful information on
structuring assignments, academic style and demonstrating critical engagement.
Please ensure that any work submitted by you for assessment has been correctly referenced as WBS expects
all students to demonstrate the highest standards of academic integrity at all times and treats all cases of poor
academic practice and suspected plagiarism very seriously. You can find information on these matters on
my.wbs, in your student handbook and on the University’s library web pages here.
The University’s Regulation 11 clarifies that ‘…’cheating’ means an attempt to benefit oneself or another by
deceit or fraud. This includes reproducing one’s own work…’ It is important to note that it is not permissible to
re-use work which has already been submitted by you for credit either at WBS or at another institution (unless
you have been explicitly told that you can do so). This is considered self-plagiarism and could result in
significant mark reductions.
Upon submission of assignments, students will be asked to agree to one of the following declarations:
Individual work submissions:
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By agreeing to these declarations (when the message pops up on submission) you are acknowledging that you
have understood the rules about plagiarism and self-plagiarism and have taken all possible steps to ensure
that your work complies with the requirements of WBS and the University.
You should only indicate your agreement with the relevant statement, once you have satisfied yourself that
you have fully understood its implications. If you are in any doubt, you must consult with the Module
Organiser or Named Internal Examiner of the relevant module, because, once you have indicated your
agreement, it will not be possible to later claim that you were unaware of these requirements in the event
that your work is subsequently found to be problematic in respect to suspected plagiarism or selfplagiarism.

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