Financial Analysis and Performance of BP and Other Oil Companies in Stock Exchange 100

Exam guidance, I don’t know exact questions, but as module tutor told it will concern BP company or its retail subgroup and 2 other other oil companies listed in the stock exchange 100. We will need analyse them.

1. Financial position, performance and reporting (using the most recently published financial statements (annual). For analyse we should take at least 3 years period.

2. Demonstrate the key ratios, their calculations, sources and how they indicate on the certain factors

4. Illustration of graphs, data

5. Swot analysis

6. Pestle analysis 

7. Porters 5 forces

8, Economies of scale,

9. Oligopolistic competition

10. Space matrix analysis

11. Recommendations

Your answer needs to:

Demonstrate sound knowledge of accounting, microeconomics and macroeconomics concepts 

Make use of relevant examples  

Make use of the financial press and other appropriate sources and the academic literature  

Show an ability to evaluate concepts and their appropriateness to applications.

You may choose the standpoint from which this report is made (as competitor, investor, potential acquirer, supplier, customer, landlord or lessee) and you should identify this in the introduction to the report.

This is in order to give the report some ‘focus’ and does not mean that you should limit your analysis purely to factors specifically of interest to the type of organisation you represent. There are three common methods of obtaining published financial statements.

The financial press of your home country may facilitate this.

For example, the UK site for the Financial Times offers downloadable financial statements and other information for many companies – often Other sources of information maintained in the library (and online) are the Financial Times, FT.com website and Business Ratio and Key Note reports. Other special reports, for example those circulated by the broking arms of financial services companies, may also be available by direct request from the relevant organisations.

There are also many websites maintained by financial services organisations (e.g. Morningstar, Bloomberg, etc) that often freely provide useful information and commentary.

Content The report should address the following aspects:

Analysis of the financial strengths and weaknesses revealed by the financial statements. -Key ratios (e.g. profitability, liquidity, asset utilisation and gearing) should be compared against both prior years and with two suitably selected companies or other peer group/industry information. Note that while it is impossible entirely to separate the financial aspects from the strategic and wider management issues, the primary focus of the assignment remains financial.

Please also note that the figures you use in your analysis should be taken from the most recent complete set of annual financial statements (NOT the interim statements) and should be those referred to in the statements as ‘Consolidated’ or ‘Group’ rather than any denoted as ‘Company’ or ‘Company only’.

Review of the market perception of the company in terms of stock price performance and response from the analyst community (you will need to employ the stock market performance indicators such as EPS, dividend yield, etc as discussed in the module).

Macroeconomic environment, microeconomic aspects relating to firm and consumer behaviour, competitive environment and market 
structure.  The report must include the following elements.

A key point or executive summary of conclusions (preferably at the beginning of the report) (Note: this IS included in the word-count).

Graphical illustration, where appropriate (graphs and tables are not included in the word count). Resist the temptation to relegate charts and tables to the appendices. You should place the ‘bulk’ data there and extract ‘mini’ tables/charts/graphs, placing them in the body of your 
report at the appropriate places to illustrate the points you are making.

In particular, when dealing with the second task above, you should use a chart of share/stock price movements during the period under review and map significant rises or falls in the price against key events affecting the company in the review period. 

A bibliography of sources of information and theoretical material used (Note: this is not included in the word count). It is essential to give 
acknowledgement of any external sources, making it clear whether the reference is being directly quoted or indirectly consulted.

Not to do this may constitute plagiarism, which is considered a serious offence against academic integrity – and against which the official sanctions are severe!