Date received in the Student Records Office

Assignment Topsheet

Student ID:.......................................................................................

Unit Title: Business Data Analysis Unit Code: BSS002-6.....................................

Unit coordinator’s name: C F Shoostarian Submission due date: Friday 16/july/’10......

Assignment Title: “fastest growing company” Issued on: 28/June/’10...................................

Work presented in an assessment must be your own. Plagiarism is where a student copies work from another
source, published or unpublished (including the work of another student) and fails to acknowledge the influence
of another’s work or to attribute quotes to the author. Plagiarism is an academic offence and the penalty can be
serious. The University’s policies relating to Plagiarism can be found in the regulations at
http://www.luton.ac.uk/livingandstudying/qa/documents
To detect possible plagiarism we may submit your work to the national plagiarism detection facility. This
searches the Internet and an extensive database of reference material including other students’ work to identify
any duplication with the work you have submitted.
Once your work has been submitted to the detection service it will be stored electronically in a database and
compared against work submitted from this and other universities. It will therefore be necessary to take
electronic copies of your materials for transmission, storage and comparison purposes and for the operational
back-up process. This material will be stored in this manner indefinitely.

I have read the above information and I confirm that this work is my own and that it may be processed
and stored in the manner described.

Signature......................................................................................................... Date..............................................

Extension deadline
CAAS agrees that the assignment may be submitted ____ days after the deadline and should be marked
without penalty.

CAAS confirmation................................................................................................................................................

All assignments must be handed into the Student Records Office by 4:30 pm on the due date. Please
leave sufficient time to meet this deadline and do not leave the handing-in of assignments to the last
minute or you will have to queue. Top sheets without module codes will not be accepted. Students who
arrive after 4:30 pm will not be allowed access to the Student Records Office.

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Assessment

Grade..............................Tutor’s signature...........................................................................................................

Note this grade is provisional until agreed by the Examination Board

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Guidelines for Preparing Your Group Assignment Report
Your report should have a fron page which clealy states your name, surname, student reference number, title of
the assignment and the date. Followed by a Table of contents which tells the reader clealy about the detailed
structure of your report, all pages should be numbered and the materials presented in the report should be well
sequenced and organized. Tables, diagrams, graph and Excel outputs should be clearly numbered and has
relevant headings.
The report should be clear and attempt in answering the questions raised in the assignment. Your data analysis
section of the report should use the sample data you collected and answer questions which are of most benefit
to an investor who is confronted by this data and wishes to make sense of them in order to make a more
informed choice. The report should also have a conclusion and recommendation section which discusses your
overall findings and how these findings will help the potential investors to make a more informed decision.
1. As the first step you will need to act very quickly within the first three weeks from the start of semester to
find other students with whom you will be able to form a working group. Your group should have a
minium of 4 students with a maximum of 6 students.
2. Decide on a group co-ordinator who will have help to collect everyones detsils, make sure you all meet
regularly, collectively decide who will do which part of the assignment, decides on realistic mile stones
for completing the assignment and ensuring that the work progresses smoothly and that the completed
report is ready for submission by the deadline given.
3. Have a clear tight structure which attempts in answering the questions you have been asked in the
assignment.
4. Divide the assignment into appropriate parts or sections for management of materials and better
presentation.
5. Have a clear logical sequence in answering each question.
6. Find as much as you can about the London Stock Exchange and the FTSE 100 Index, what the
investors are looking for and how the data analysis are going to help them.
7. Avoid deviating from what is important in answering the question.
8. One approach to adopt is to write the question and then write the answer.
9. Avoid copying theory from books in order to answer a question- it is not needed, just answer the
question.
10. Write a clear well structured table of contents.
11. Write an introduction which is in your own words and tells the reader what the problems are and how
you are going to solve them.
12. Include in the main body of your report appropriate tables and diagrams which are clearly labelled as
Table 1.0……….., Diagram 1.0………etc.
13. Act early to avoid rushing nearer the deadline. I will not help you if you come to me in week 4 and say I
have have not done any work.
14. Do not write pages and pages which say little of significance. Think carefully before writing and make
sure you first and foremost answer questions that are benefit to the potential investors, you have
spellchecked your work, you have numbered the pages, tables, diagrams, and have edited your writing
by leaving out unnecessary or duplicate materials.

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 15. Have a clear conclusion which summarises your main findings with an accompanying recommendation
to the company for solution and improvement.
16. Limited and general but not specific support is provided to those students who have made a genuine
effort in their assignment in week 8 within the normal seminar time, my surgery hours can also be used
for consultations.
17. The projected date for the return of your marked assignment will be with 15 working days upon the
receipt of the assignment from the student centre.
18. General feed back within the categories of grades will be provided, common mistakes will be highlighted
and areas for improvement will be given.

Learning outcomes:
This assignment is intended to provide an opportunity for the business student to develop an understanding of
the issues involved in by:
Demonstrating the necessary technical Read and understand the appropriate literature
vocabulary. and use the relevant vocabulary correctly.
Recognising the problem type and analyse it Analyse data using a combination of graphical
using an appropriate technique. and statistical means.
Critically appraise the techniques Discuss the appropriateness/shortcomings of the
employed/models formulated. solutions presented.
Proposing/analysing policy alternatives based on Provide an analysis of alternative policies and
the analysis of the data/models. recommend appropriate solutions

Marking Scheme:

Your completed assignment will be marked according to the following marking scheme outlined below.

For Grade A
 The report should have a clear, logical structure and sequence that shows the interconnectedness of the

materials presented;

 The report should be professionally presented with attention paid to details of the language used, which

would make the report readable, easy to follow and informative to the reader;

 The main part of the report on “Data Analysis” should provide clear, comprehensive and accurate

answers to questions raised in the assignment;

 Tables and diagrams should have clear labels and caption for easy identification and reference to the

comments provided;

 Comments should be relevant to the data analysis conducted and as much as possible to unravel the

hidden features of the data.

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For Grade C
 The report should have a logical structure and sequence that shows the interconnectedness of the

materials presented;

 The second part of the report on “Data Analysis” should provide reasonably clear, answers to most of

the questions raised in the assignment;

 Tables and diagrams should have clear labels and caption for easy identification and reference to the

comments provided;

 Comments ideally should support the data analysis conducted.

For Grade D
 The report should be compiled which connects the different parts of the assignment together;

 The second part of the report on “Data Analysis” should demonstrate an attempt in answering to the

questions raised in the assignment;

 Tables and diagrams should have clear labels and caption for easy identification and reference to the

comments provided;

 Comments should support the data analysis conducted.

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Fortune names RIM fastest growing company... in the world
by Donald Melanson posted Aug 18th 2009 at 12:22PM

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that RIM is doing pretty well even in the face of an economic
downturn, but it looks like it's been doing really well -- at least according to Fortune, which has just named the
Canadian company the fastest growing firm in the world. That's apparently based on a combination of profits,
turnover, and investment return over three years which, in RIM's case, translates an 84% growth in profits in the
past three years, a 77% growth in revenue, and a total return of 45%. It's also actually the first time RIM has
made the list, although that's at least partly due to the fact that Fortune didn't include non-US firms last time
around.
In September of every year Fortune Magazine publishes its Fastest Growing Companies list. The companies are
ranked on revenue, earnings growth, and their stock returns over the past three years. This is a list dominated by
traditional business areas, even though it is a list of fastest growing rather than biggest or most profitable. eBay
is an online business, and a couple of the others do some significant online business, but overwhelmingly this is
a list of pre-internet areas of business: steel, food, energy, medicine and so on.
What makes these companies performance to be considered as fast growing companies, how do they perform in
the long run and what advantages and disadvantages do fast growing companies face? These are all interesting
questions to be considered. The table below gives data concerning the 30 fastest –growing companies as listed
on March 16, 2005, on the Fortune magazine website.

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Ran Revenu
k Company EPS e Total
Growt Retur
    h Growth n
1 InVision Technologies 222% 93% 135%
2 eResearch Technology 256% 43% 218%
3 New Century Financial 85% 91% 89%
Central European
4 Distribution 98% 49% 135%
5 eBay 92% 70% 39%
National Medical Health
6 Card Sys 85% 44% 107%
7 Countrywide Financial 78% 71% 46%
8 Neoware Systems 76% 70% 47%
Friedman Billing Ramsey
9 Group 93% 52% 44%
10 Bradley Pharmaceuticals 59% 59% 76%
11 Middleby 91% 33% 109%
12 Hovnanian Enterprises 71% 40% 69%
13 Websense 162% 60% 23%
14 Sanders Morris Harris Group 185% 35% 36%
15 Career Education 66% 51% 45%
16 American Healthways 167% 48% 28%
17 United PanAm Financial 65% 39% 62%
18 FTI Consulting 105% 61% 19%
19 Jarden 99% 25% 109%
20 Par Pharmaceutical 143% 87% 5%
21 Capital Title Group 84% 87% 21%
22 Advanced Neuromodulation 128% 46% 24%
23 Possis Medical 76% 38% 42%
24 Symantec 85% 30% 59%
25 ASV 128% 33% 32%
26 Chico's FAS 47% 43% 66%
27 Rewards Network 152% 29% 38%
28 Fidelity National Financial 64% 38% 38%
29 NetBank 107% 60% -1%
30 Electronic Arts 254% 32% 24%

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Required:
1. Develop a stem-and-leaf display of the revenue growth percentages for the 30 fastest-growing
companies and describe the shape of the distribution.
2. Develop a frequency distribution and a frequency histogram of the EPS (earnings per share) growth
percentage. Then describe the shape of the distribution.
3. Construct a percent frequency polygon of the total return percentages and then describe the shape of
the distribution.
4. Construct cumulative frequency and cumulative frequency distributions of the EPS (earnings per share)
growth percentages. Then construct a relative frequency ogive of these percentages.
5. Calculate and provide a clear interpretation of the price/earnings ratio for each of the companies, provide
a dot plot and describe the distribution of the P/E ratios.
6. Construct a dot plot of the total return percentages for the 30 fastest-growing companies and describe
the distribution of return percentages.
7. How would you summaries your findings about the fastest-growing companies, pay particular attention
to the questions posed earlier and the result of your data analysis.