I’m not impressed that it’s nearly week 12. Where have the last 3 months gone? Anyway, I didn’t want to submit an unfinished assignment as a draft but it is what it is. My time management is definelty reflective of the challenges I have faced this term. I will keep moving forward though. I still have Step 5 to complete so any feedback on what I have done so far will be welcomed.

I really like calculating ratios, there is something therapeutic about it, but anyone can learn how to calculate ratios. It’s our understanding of what these ratio’s tell us that’s important.

My firm’s profitability ratios show me that they are doing pretty well at generating income from their revenue and utilising their assets well to generate returns. They are doing well at controlling their operating and overhead costs. ROA dropped slightly in 2020, which I put down to the effects of the pandemic. I had a look at Lindsay Transport to compare these ratios and it appears as thought they took a harder hit in 2020. K&S are a significantly larger company so this reflects their ability to withstand economic pressure.

I expected them to have a relatively high total asset turnover in comparison to their net profit margin which was shown to be true in 2017. The next three years were a switch around. The net profit margin was high and the total asset turnover was low, not an extreme variance though. I suspect since they have a large fixed asset base they wouldn’t be turning over assets quickly through sales- they are an asset intensive company – large proportion of P,P&E for their operations. The ATO and PM from an enterprise standpoint are very interesting in their differences, which I will note in my accounting drivers commentary. The current asset turnover ratio was a lot higher than the net profit margin. Trades and other receivables is the largest current asset, so given this information I would suspect that their collection methods are sound, but I want to look into this further because the ratio has gone up and down over the last 4 years and ideally you want to be collecting as quickly as possible. I’m also not sure what the industry benchmark is here so I will do some more digging.

Liquidity ratios tell me a sombre story. They only had enough current assets to meet their current liabilities in 2020, which I put down the the increase in cash and cash equivalents (government stimulus) , and decrease in current liabilities (interest bearing loans and borrowings). They also refinanced in 2020 and the classification of some line items changed, so it this really an accurate reflection of liquidity? I would be more inclined to go with the last three years that indicates ratios below 1. This is where I need to look further to answer why this is the case. When you take receivables out of the equation the ratio drops drastically which shows me they rely heavily on the trade and other receivables to meet their current obligations. This indicates a higher risk of default and an area I need to look further into given their industry and the economic challenges they may face in the future.

They are leveraging quite high indicating they are structured towards debt over equity financing. In 2018 for every dollar in equity they had 1.51 in debt, this decreased to 1.21 in 2020, but it’s still high. This will be an interesting comparison with my enterprise ratio’s. There isn’t a problem with heavy leverage in a larger company that has significant cash flow but not when a company is in decline. I’m going to look at their cash flow statements to get a little more information on this. I know we are concentrating on our enterprise ratio’s but I think this is something worth looking at further.

The equity ratio shows me for every dollar of assets, between 39.9% and 45.3% over the last 4 years has been financed by equity. This ties in with the last ratio as it indicates they are a leveraged company. This can also raise solvency issues as it ties back to their ability to meet their debt obligations in a timely way. The times interest earned ratio shows that they can meet their interest expenses two times over in 2020 but it hasn’t stayed stable in the previous years. In 2019 it was 1.40 which would question their abilities to pay their interest expenses. I am going to look further into this because it’s a solvency issue and if they fall on hard times and receivables go down, they run the risk of not being able to meet their obligations which they rely heavily on receivables to do.

That’s enough for today I think. I will post again on their other ratio’s hopefully within the next week and their accounting drivers as well.

How is everyone else’s ratio and accounting drivers commentary going?

Well,

I am late to the party with my draft. I know it’s not a big deal, but I have been sitting on my draft, overanalysing the crap out of it because I don’t know how I feel about it. I go from being happy about to thinking it’s rubbish in the space of 5 minutes.

I thought I better bite the bullet and post it. So here it is……………………………..feedback away!

Nope. Well kind of. So close yet so far away, all at the same time.

It’s Easter Sunday and week 4 is nearly done. I spent the months before Term 1 commenced counting down the days until uni started again. Now I find myself wishing for about 10 more hours in the day. There is way too much work and not enough time to do it in. Well I mean I could completely ignore my family, friends, my outside of uni work and other commitments, but that’s really not a sound plan for my mental health. I have been there, done that, pretty much every term so far and it comes with a price.

This is probably the moment I need to relax my expectations of myself a little, but I’m paranoid I’m going to graduate and not remember a thing I have learnt over the course of my degree. I feel like I need to give it every waking hour. I did come to a realisation the other day that my good grades aren’t going to be worth much to me if I don’t really understand or know how to apply what I have learnt. This is turn is causing me to give more time to the content and my assignments in order to approach them from a different perspective. It’s really a catch 22 with the time issue at present. The constant being pulled in different directions, wondering if that extra couple of hours that you could have given to something else is really going to make that much of a difference. Most of the time I feel like a walking contradiction. I’m want to be the poster child for balance but I don’t for one second think it’s possibly in this season of my life, nor do I even know how to schedule myself in a way that seems even remotely balanced.

I spent the last 4 days working the assignments for my 4 units. 1 assignment – 1 unit per day. While I’m not where I think I should be with them, I’m further than I was yesterday, further than I was last week and further than I was last month. I try to never take for granted the fact that I GET to further my education, but sometimes I get so caught up in how much of it there is to process in such a short period of time, I forget that learning is a gift. One that we get to do everyday, all of our lives if we choose to.

This brings me to the moral of my story. Just keep chipping away at it. Hour by hour, minute by minute if need be and know that you will get there. It’s worth the frustration, the possible tears, the questioning, and pushing through that niggling feeling of wanting to quit. It may not be easy, but it will be worth it.

I was going to say ‘just keep swimming’ but I think it would be super hard to swim when you feel like you are wading through quicksand everyday🤷‍♀️

So here’s to chipping away at it into week 5 and beyond.

Happy uni-ing everyone 😁

Well my attempt to get to know my company further and write about it didn’t eventuate until today. Nothing like the uni journey and its ability to leave you feeling like you are wading through quicksand everyday. That’s a blog for another day though (coming soon).

So I know some information about my company, I wrote about that in my last blog post, but I thought I better engage with them a bit more. Their website isn’t very fun. Here is a link to their most exciting video.

www.ksgroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Customer-Video-1.2.mp4.

I think you’ll find a sense of comfort listening to the music. To be fair, it’s a corporate video so I shouldn’t be surprised. There is nothing cool floating around on the internet about K&S like there is Ryman Healthcare. This could be a good thing. No environmental or legal issues that could be lurking in the shadows, waiting to make an impact on their profits (that we know of). I didn’t want to spend too much time searching for articles or video’s about K&S. We all know how that ends. A couple of hundred clicks later and you end up on YouTube watching cat videos. This may or may not be a true story. So I had a super smart idea to google the subsidiaries instead of just the parent and if I still couldn’t find anything I would go watch cat videos, I mean do something else uni related.

I started with K&S Freighters. Now these Mack’s can haul some big things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc26bjE80-0

K&S Heavy Haulage with the worlds largest wheeled loader. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DoVkmBpGGo

I checked all of them that were listed on the website and that’s about it. Everything just leads back to the K&S Corporation website, makes sense when they are 100% owned entities. With that I decided that I’ll delve a little deeper into these businesses in another blog post as K&S has quite a bit of info on them on their website.

I’ll leave you two more interesting things I found out today:

1. The annual revenue of the transport and logistics industry is around $102.87 billion. K&S’s FY2020 operating revenue was $790.6 million. Hugggggeeeeeee industry and in my opinion is one that will continue to grow and alot. This got me thinking about the what kind of revenue TOLL and Linfox would be turning over. I know TOLL had an 8.3% share of the market in 2013 and K&S was third with 1.2% share. I’ll do some further digging time permitting. I would say it’s likely that one, two and three are still the same.

2. These are some of the non COVID related challenges the transport and logistics industry face. Not from K&S themselves but relevant to them. Logistics Challenges In Australia & The Emerging Solutions – Cannon Logistics

I hope you are all enjoying getting to know your company’s more!

Find your company time rolled around again. I looked at my company, K&S Corporation Limited, saw they were a transport services company, shrugged my shoulders and said ‘no idea’. I then moved onto my other three units for another couple of days before I decided to give step 3 some of my time.

Turns out, the company itself is pretty interesting. Founded as a partnership in 1945 , K&S (Kain and Shelton) commenced trading not long after world war II, supporting Mt Gambier and Victorian based businesses. They pioneered the use of refrigerated vans, opened their first Ampol Fuel agency and began depot operations in Melbourne in the 1950’s. In the 1980’s they went public on the ASX. From humble beginnings, K&S now have many other companies under their umbrella, one being K&S Bulk, located right here in my home town of Rockhampton and they are one of the leading national multi-modal transport and distribution services providers in Australia and New Zealand.

From a quick glance of their latest annual report, two things stick out for me. COVID-19 and its effects on 19/20 revenue, which will more than likely be something that is going to come up for a lot of people’s company’s this term. As well as the most recent change in management with the previous CFO ceasing his role in December 2019 and the current CFO being appointed in April 2020.

If anyone else has a transport company, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on what stands out for you in your company’s latest report.

I plan to dig quite a bit deeper this weekend and hopefully write another blog post later next week as I get further into steps 3-5

Cheers,

Lisa.

It’s my most used catch phrase of the last 2 years. The last 2 weeks has consisted of looking at the workload for my 4 units and trying to organise myself whilst getting ahead on week 1’s work. I don’t like to get too far ahead as I feel like I have to back track once the term officially starts. I have almost finished my KCQ’s for ACCT13017, but as per usual it’s extremely long winded so I will more than likely edit it 17 times before submitting on Thursday.

I am super nervous/excited/anxious about the start of term tomorrow so I thought I would write a quick post and wish you all the very best for the term ahead.

Happy studying,

Lisa.

I had 3 terms without Martin as a lecturer and you can clearly tell as I haven’t made a blog post since 2019. Oooooppppppsss! I was going to keep the blog going since I enjoy writing so much but hey, life gets in the way sometimes.

A quick refresher for those who don’t know me. I’m Lisa, nearly 34, married to an awesome man. We have two teenage boys, 16 and 14 this year. The eldest is just about to get his learners license and I’m still trying to navigate this parenting thing without ripping all my hair most days. I am the bookkeeper for our small business and I am a full time student. This is my 3rd year. I have 7 units to go and I have all the feels about what I’m going to do once I graduate, which isn’t decided at this stage. One day I’ll have it all figured out, probably not though 😂 (yes, I’m a millennial who uses this emoji. I wear my hair with a middle part though, so maybe I am as cool as the Gen Z’s. Probably not to that as well).

As you can probably tell by my writing style, I waffle. I’ll write and write and write but in real life I’m an introvert and I spend most of my time hidden away in my happy place………my office. I bloody love numbers and it took me 10 years to get over my self doubt to actually start uni. I am sooooooooo happy I did. It has been all rollercoaster of emotions the last 2 years but one of the most rewarding journeys I have undertaken so far. It’s just like this whole other world of possibilities opened up once I took the plunge.

Anyway, I am thrilled to be back in one of Martin’s units ( I would like Martin to be the unit coordinator for every unit, its not much of an ask) and tackling KCQ’s again. We have a love/hate relationship KCQ’s and I. I’m still not 100% sure why. It’s the same with Peerwise. I like the concept, I’m just not overly fond of it later in the term when the questions get a little lacklustre and repetitive. My competitive nature keeps me in the game though because that 5% has nearly been the difference between a HD and a D. I have extremely high expectations of myself, but I have come this far with great marks (hopefully retained some information along the way too) so I don’t plan to get complacent now.

I look forward to reading as many of your blogs as I can this term. If you decide to read mine, I can promise that all my blog posts will be long winded and probably completely off topic, until the assessment due dates start rolling in and I just start dumping my tasks in here because I have to.

Have a marvellous term everyone.

It’s been a challenging term so far to say the least, so I am thrilled to be somewhat up to date in this unit. Freaking out about 4 exams from the get go is normal right. Assignments and I get along way better I think.

I have attached my draft steps 7-11 for feedback.

I hope everyone is travelling well with their studies.

Lisa.

Hi everyone,

Here are my draft documents. Feedback is welcome.

Lisa.