FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING & ANALYSIS
Group Assignment (Due: 30 October 2024, 09:00am UK time)
PartI: Merlin Entertainment – Long Term Assets (22 marks)
Merlin Entertainments’ plc is a British-based company which operates 127 attractions, 19 hotels and 7 holiday villages in 27 countries. It is the second-largest amusement park corporation by annual attendance (66 million visitors in 2017), behind Walt Disney Parks, Experiences, and Consumer Products (150 million visitors in 2017). Please consider the excerpts (separate file)from Merlin’s annual report for fiscal year ended 26 December 2015, and answer the following questions. Unless otherwise stated, all numbers are in million pound sterling.
1) What kind of assets are “brands”, how is their value calculated, and where do they appear on Merlin’s financial statements? (4 marks)
2) What is the recorded value of Merlin’sbrands? (2 marks)
3) Merlin would like to build a new rollercoaster at their Alton Towers theme park, financing the construction with a loan. How will they record expenditures related to the development of this new ride, and what expenditures should be expensedor capitalised? (3 marks)
4) What are the amounts Merlin records for both the gross and net balance of “Plant and equipment”? (3 marks)
5) Estimate the average age of plant and equipment at Merlin (4 marks)
6) On January 1, 2016, assume Merlin purchased a delivery vehicle costing £40,000. The vehicle has an estimated 6-year life and a £4,000 residual value.
Use the units-of-production depreciation method and estimate that the vehicle will be driven for a total of 100,000 miles. What is the vehicle's book value as of December 31, 2017 assuming the vehicle was driven 10,000 miles during 2016 and driven 18,000 miles during 2017? (6 mark)
Part II: Salesforce – Ratios and Cash Flows (78 marks)
You are required to read the attached salesforce.com case and answer the following questions. Do NOT answer the questions included within the case.
General Instructions for Part II, question 6
- Show your group number and the names of the group members on the cover page.
- Use size 12 for paragraph text throughout your paper.
- Financial data must be drawn exclusively from the case provided. Using financial data from other sources (e.g. analyst reports, other documents published by the firms etc) is not allowed.
- All content must be your work. Copying and pasting from external documents is not allowed.
1) How much cash did salesforce.com spend on business combinations during the fiscal year 2010? (3 marks)
2) How much goodwill was recognised as a result of these business combinations? (3 Marks)
3) How much goodwill amortisation expense was recognised during the fiscal year 2010? (3 marks)
4) Estimate how much cash Salesforce.com collected from customers during the fiscal year ending 31 January, 2010. Tip: think about transactions where salesforce would recognise revenue but not collect cash AND transactions where salesforce would collect cash from customers but not recognise revenue – how would those transactions be recorded and what account(s) would be affected? [4 marks)
5) Calculate the Return on Equity (ROE) for Salesforce.comforthe fiscal-year ended 2010. Decompose the ROE into the profitability, activity, and leverage components. (5 marks)
6) Examine the financial data in Exhibit 5 related to SAP, a competitor of Salesforce.com and are typical of firms in this industry. Your company is considering signing along-term contract with Salesforce.com but your boss is concerned with the financial health of Salesforce.com when compared with other firms in the industry and SAP in particular, and asks you to write a 1-2 page memo about your thoughts on the financial health of Salesforce.com and the difference in the ratios for SAP and Salesfore.com. You can include exhibits and tables as appendices to your memo (charts, tables, exhibits, etc. do NOT count against your 2 page limit). Limit your answer to the information contained in this case. (60 marks)