It’s been a long Journey of learning and unlearning the rudiments of corporate financial accounting.
The Capstone project was not a surprise to mmba4 as we had been told that at the end of the semester, we would do a capstone project.
In group 4 where I fall into, we were assigned two companies in the agricultural sector to analyze and make recommendations using different types of ratio analysis.
At first, it looked like an insurmountable mountain, but with the “can do spirit” of other team members, we started dissection it one step at a time.
First, we started by ensuring that the companies to be analyzed had up to years financial statement.
Once we got an approval from the faculty to go ahead with the companies chosen, we hit the ground running.
This particular project helped me to see understand the Income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement and notes to the financial statement.
We used the vertical analyses approach to solve.
Some of which were liquidity ratio, solvency ratio, efficiency ratio, investment ratio and profitability ratio.
The two companies we analyzed where Olam and Livestock Feed.
The ratio analysis was able to show that Olam was doing far better that Livestock in terms of liquidity, Profitability, efficiency, investment and solvency.
We also noticed that, for most of the years, Livestock had only one product especially poultry feed in the market to sell, while Olam has a wide range of products to sell in more than sixty -six countries. So, it was not strange to see livestock feed being affected by change in economic policies and dynamics. Another point we noted was that Olam had a clear-cut vision and mission statement. Their operational strategies where clearly outlined in every of their document whereas Livestock was clear as to their mission and operational strategies. This goes a long way to show that Failure is also something that is planned for.
Our recommendations where within the confines of all the strength and weaknesses we noticed for Olam and livestock feed.
Without mixing words, Olam is a good company to invest in especially if you have a low-risk appetite. But if you have a high-risk appetite, you may want to invest in livestock because thy are actually not running at a loss.
On the day of the slide presentation to the whole class, and faculty, we already had our slides ready but we didn’t know who the faculty was going to choose to present in our group.
Everyone was tensed because the faculty didn’t look like he was in a good mood that day.
I particularly didn’t want him to call my name to present, not because I didn’t know what to say, but because I knew there where other group members who would do better. (We are talking about 30 marks) therefore it won’t be a bad idea to put our best hands forward.
Somehow luck shined on us and one of the bravest and hardworking team members was chosen to present for my Group.
This made all the difference and put the icing on the cake as a reward for our hard work.
Looking back, All I can say is that I am willing to take on new task and challenges.
The Place of Team Management in Project Execution