And here is the rest! Included here is Assignment 1 Steps 3 - 6 the entire document :)

Term 3 2023

Assignment 1

Step 3

Australia’s Most Trusted nbn® Internet Provider | Aussie Broadband

My initial thoughts and first Impression

I clicked on the link to my company that Maria had emailed me, and my initial thoughts were positive it is an Australian company and one that I had heard of before. Now, I do not use Aussie Broadband; we use Starlink due to our remote location but, will I have second thoughts on changing after reading and diving down into Aussie Broadband! The front page of their website’s states “Join Australia’s most trusted telco, 100% Australian-based customer support. Thousand of five-star reviews. That’s Aussie Broadband”. I feel like they are really pushing the Aussie theme with the green, yellow and white colours that they are using but are they Australian owned? The statement reads, “100% Australian-based customer support” not 100% Australian owned. I wonder how many people are thinking the same thing as me.

As I scroll down the page, I see that they offer a number of different services to both personal and business customers and even have bundles with the convenience of having these all on the one single monthly bill, but do they offer services to my home address? I go to the “Enter your address to see what plans are available” tab and enter my home address. Unable to service the address! It looks like I am staying with Starlink. Now to have a look at the financial statements

Annual Report KCQ’s

Reading the Directors Report for FY23, I have seen that they talk about integration of two businesses in FY23 and continuing through out FY24. I wonder which two business they are referring to. My initial thought was that their targeted market was the residential broadband business, and they are now branching out into other internet pipelines. I will have to go back and read the other financial reports and see if this is something that they are doing or if it is some other kind of business. After having a quick look at the last couple of financial reports I can see that Aussie Broadband has diversified from a largely residential provider to a telecommunications and technology provider of not only residential but also business, wholesale, which I am not sure what customers fall into this category and government sectors.

Arears of the business that seem most important or critical to them.

It appears that one of the most important parts of the business was the acquisition and integration of Over the Wire and Ausie Broadband in FY23 this has enabled them to restructure their operations and sees an increase of 47% revenue for FY23. This reflects the full 12 months’ ownership of Over the Wire. Reading their 2021 and 2022 Annual Reports it shows the company making a profit and increases each year in all areas including EBITDA and their gross margin. Their cashflow alone has had a significant increase from $37.8m in FY22 to $116.7m this year, and as Martin has said in our lecture that if a company doesn’t have cashflow then the company will not be able to survive. With such a large increase in cashflow Aussie Broadband appears to me to be financially secure and I wonder if I will still think this after looking at all their financial statements and entering them into my spreadsheet. The increase in cashflow tells me that the company is improving and thriving, and it will not be long before they hit their targeted growth goal of 1 million broadband services by FY25.

One area that they are invested in is growing their business development team with a focus on the enterprise and government segment. The company wants to build the right foundations to be able to offer a broad range of services and see value in owning and operating their own infrastructure assets. With investing in growth will this mean that their expenses will be higher this year compared to other years. Something that I have heard before immediately comes to the forefront of my mind, you have to spend money to make money.

Key challenges and Aussie Broadband’s apparent strategy

Growth with recruitment remains a challenge in FY23 and attracting and securing talent and the right people to fit the business. Employee expenses as a percentage were up to the previous period and they are saying that recruitment remains a challenge. Recruitment is something that most businesses are struggling with currently in Australia and this is something that has been discussed in the leadership meetings in the business I am currently working in. We will be needing over 500 qualified train drivers across Australia before the end of FY25 due to securing new contracts and acquisitions of other companies over the last 12 months.

Aussie Broadband knows that they are in a competitive market with concentrated top four large companies all focusing on competitive price, quality product and how other companies offering incentives can have an impact on their new customers however in FY23 they were named the most trusted telco in Australia and have received numerous awards.

Do I have any concerns at this stage?

The only concern that I have at this stage is the financial statements have Consolidated (restated) reports in the notes and I am wondering if these will have any impact on the financial statements when entering the figures into my spreadsheet. I am happy with my company and look forward to learning more about the reality of the business through financial statements.

Studiosity Feedback

I submitted my writing at 11:51pm and was surprised to have a reply when I woke up the next morning. The assistance that was provided was positive and will help me with my writing in the future. I think with the changes that I have made to the structure and the correction of my misuse of commas that my writing is easier for the reader to understand. One piece of advice that was offered was to use the PEEL approach. This is not something that I have heard of before and I am willing to learn to improve on my writing.

Link to moodle page: Sandra Voll: Public profile (cqu.edu.au)

Link to my personal blog page: Home | My Site (sandravoll4.wixsite.com)

Top 3 blogs

1. Home | Megan S Accounting L (meganbittner95.wixsite.com)

I found Megan’s blog easy to read. I liked that it was easy to find information about her company NEXTDC. At first, I thought that this may have been a competitor company to mine, and after reading Megan’s steps 3-6 I can see that both our companies are in the same industry and offer similar services to customers, but their target audience is different.

2. Home | My Site 1 (denijai20042.wixsite.com)

I loved the main page and how it sweeps over a forest, very visually appeasing. I come from a cattle station and enjoy the photo of the kelpie in your about me section. The Dubber is very different, and I wonder how they came up with the name as you were right when you said that the name doesn’t give anything away as to what they do.

3. Home | University Experience (sbennett1906.wixsite.com)

What drew me to Sam’s blog was that he has a company that I know and wanted to learn more about. I found Sam’s blog very informative and interesting that Qube is calling themselves Australia’s largest integrated import and export logistic service provider. I am sure that Aurizon holds that title. No bias here I work for Aurizon! The layout of Sam’s blog was very easy to navigate.

Step 4

The completed company spreadsheet has been uploaded to my blog page.

My Company's Spreadsheet (sandravoll4.wixsite.com)

Step 5

I listened to Chapter 2 and 3 after I had entered my company’s statements into the spreadsheet, my interest sparked when I heard Martin talking about the reality of a business and how we can see the economic reality of a company through their financial statements. I wonder did they have equity investors before the introduction of the rules of the game? How did large businesses survive without investors?

Chapter 2

Martin talks about the financial accounting and management accounting, and I agree that large firms do have these. I have experienced this in my working life however had never giving any thought as to why these may be presented differently. I went and had a look at the financials for the company I work for and found that the management report has more details and breaks down sections and although the annual report has more information it is what I would call summarised, and the total figures were the same. We now have a digital management report, and I am able to look at a particular period whereas the financial statements are either half yearly or yearly. I am thinking that this could be due to certain areas of the business that management need to focus on to add value to the financial reports.

Accountants need to follow the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) when preparing financial statements and as we live in Australia, we need to follow accounting standards which are sent by the Australian Accounting Standards Board (ASSB). The three main professional accounting bodies take all reasonable steps to ensure that entities comply with accounting standards in Australia. Is this sort of like big brother looking over everyone? Out of the 2.3 million businesses that are actively trading in Australia I wonder how many of these do have to produce GAAP confirmed financial statements? I am still a little confused as to which entities must make their financial statements available to the public.

The quality of the information provided in my company’s financial statements was interesting, the judgement that I am making looking at them in the early stage of this unit is the acquisition of Over the Wire has helped the business as the profit margins are favourable in the last two years. I wonder if I will still hold this thought as I learn more about accounting and reading financial statements. I was only looking at the statements and had not had a good look at the start of the footnotes until hearing Martin say that the first longest ‘footnote’ is the most important one. Hearing that these will describe my firms accounting practices, I went back and read the first footnote in the annual report for the past two years and found that sections one and two were the same. Moving onto the next sections talks about the firms going concern and gives details of profit or loss, current and net assets but I know that there is so much more to learn about my firm.

Chapter 3

After being introduced to my balance sheet when entering my firms’ financials into the spreadsheet, I went back and had a further look at my balance sheet in the annual report and noticed that every item listed on my balance sheet had a note beside it except for prepayments which had increased by almost double in one year. I am not sure what the prepayments means as it is listed under assets, normally I would have thought that a prepayment would be a liability as it is a payment but now, I am not so sure.

I did enjoy watching the video with Maria and paused many times to write down things that she had said. The checks that she was able to provide to ensure that our statements were entered correctly and putting the numbers into the accounting equation: Assets + Expenses = Equity + Revenue + Liabilities felt like I had won gold when all these numbers matched up. I remember the feeling when doing bank reconciliations and I was out by only a small amount and that joyous feeling when I was able to find the mistake, enter it into the right column and presto everything balanced.

Printing out all my statements I had the Consolidated statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income, Consolidated statement of financial position, Consolidated statement of changes in equity which I used to enter into my spreadsheet but what about the Consolidated statement of cash flows. Would this be one of the most important statements because without cash flow your business will go broke?

In conclusion I am interested in learning how all these statements show us the economics of a firm’s reality and see if I can better understand the relationship between my firm’s statements. I still don’t understand the importance of the equity statement and the items that are listed on it, and I hope that I will have one of those light bulb moments later as I am reading or listening to the chapters.

Step 6

I did put a post on Facebook the day before the assignment was due asking if anybody needed feedback however, I did not get a response. I do not have any feedback to provide for this section.

And onto Assignment 2 Whoot Whoot!!