ASS#2 - Step 2 - Restating your firm's spreadsheet - Statements of changes in equity
KCQ - answers

• My company SEEK have purchased shares on-market for employee share option schemes & treasury shares. I know that purchased shares are not a transaction with shareholders, I believe they would be classified as financial comprehensive income as they're purchased for the economic benefit of a firm at a future date. 

• Tax associated with employee share scheme - Upon closer inspection this amount doesn't even show on the annual report, I just read the heading. Silly me!

• Conversion of preference shares to ordinary shares. 
  They are fixed-income security shares that the investor can choose to convert into a certain amount of shares of a company. These include a previously determined timespan or certain date that needs to mature before the conversion. This option gives the investor security, and allows for the investor to cash in on a price rise in shares whilst avoiding the price drop. Conversion of preference shares to ordinary shares therefore means that the investor has decided to convert these shares, which is a transaction with shareholders in the statement of changes in equity spreadsheet. 

• Non-controlling interests acquired on acquisition. "An ownership stake in a company where the investor has absolutely no influence over how the company is run.  The majority of investor positions are deemed to be a non-controlling interest because their ownership stake is so insignificant relative to the total number of outstanding shares. For smaller companies, any position that holds less than 50% of the outstanding voting shares is deemed to be a non-controlling interest."
• Excerpt - Investopedia"http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sharepurchaseright.asp"

ASS#2 - Step 2 - Restating your firm's spreadsheet - Statements of changes in equity
KCQ - mostly questions

After submitting my SPA#1 earlier than the due date last week, I felt relieved that it was over, accomplished and finished. Done and dusted! Now to tackle ASS#2.
Therefore today I got stuck into trying to tackle what I feel is going to be the most difficult part of the assignment, which is the restating my firm's spreadsheet.

I'm really glad that we've been provided examples and have quite thorough instructions on what needs to be done and how to do it, but I may be missing the brief as I'm finding it quite difficult.

1) I'm having difficulties deciphering which are the operating and which are the financial comprehensive income from my statement of changes in equity.
- Is anybody else having issues here?

• My company SEEK have purchased shares on-market for employee share option schemes & treasury shares. Would these be transactions with shareholders?
• Tax associated with employee share scheme other operating income?
• Conversion of preference shares to ordinary shares. This is where Martin claimed that preference shares should be excluded from equity and placed as a liability instead. However, what about 'conversion of preference shares to ordinary shares', where does this fit in? Is it essentially the same thing and should be still included as a liability?
• Non-controlling interests acquired on acquisition. I seem to think of this as other financial comprehensive income

I would greatly appreciate other students weigh in on these questions, and also to hear about your experiences with your firms reports. I'm sure that some people are finding it a breeze, but I also wonder if the difficulty of these restatements vary with the complexity of your firm's annual report. For example, my company has very little to know plant & equipment, however a lot of shares, acquisitions of other companies, tax debts due to those other companies etc. ASS#1 now seems like it was an absolute breeze, oh how I wish we were again simply transferring information from the annual report straight to the spreadsheet. However, that seemed difficult once too.

Okay! Please submit your opinions or your findings of your company. I feel like I'm brimming with questions and no one to answer them.

Closure of ASS#1 - reflections

I'm sure I won't be the only one to comment that I'm glad that part is over. Although my brain is about to spontaneously combust, I have learn't a tremendous amount of information about my company, about other peoples companies and also from the study guides. I'm glad that I was assigned "SEEK" to research. After moving to Brisbane from the Whitsunday Coast about a month ago, SEEK literally was my best friend for quite some time. I found the ease of access for finding jobs, and applying for jobs fantastic. It was so convenient to have SEEK. I enjoyed getting to learn more about the company, about it's acquisitions of other companies, it's financial state and it's future goals. I really look forward to seeing how SEEK does within the coming years.

So after the panic, the temper tantrums, the brain shut-downs, I've learnt quite a bit about myself. The last two weeks in particular have been stressful. Upon commencing full time employment of a 8:30-5:30 job, coming home and trying to manage 4 subjects per week on top of other commitments, was not going to work. I had a melt down! I commend those students that are working full time, and managing a family, my hat goes off to you as I don't know how you do it! Well, I left the full time job due to personal reasons, have now got employment where I'm working shift work, and have cut my study time back to two subjects a week. I'm relieved. It means that I can focus my time to two subjects, and do my best in those subjects as opposed to being flustered with four. Now that my work schedule has settled down, and that I know I have to pay better attention to my studies, I'm sure that I won't be submitting my next assignment two hours before it's due. But it's a learning curve, and I'm better off for it. Now, we're on to the next stage. All the best!

Answers to my questions


I found that "EBITDA" stands for "earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation" - I found this definition whilst reading through study guide chapter 3, and also on Jade Thomas' blog

I now know that "NPAT" stands for "net profit after tax", I found this definition by googling it, and came across the meaning on the ASX website

I learnt that "fully franked" dividends means when the company pays the taxes on the dividends before they're given to the investors. The investors are then eligible to claim for a credit of the taxes.

In regards to short-term incentives (STIs) I found that Megan Thompson company uses STIs, offering cash and share-based component incentives for both executives and other employees, and offers another bonus for exceptional work from their employees. Karina Kaiser's company offers reward packages to encourage the employees to work harder, however she's found that her company has received bad reputation regarding it's senior authorities actions and behaviour towards the companies employees.

I found that there are other companies that include what population of their workforce is occupied by females. Megan Thompson company does, however they don't have as much of a population as my company, and are making it one of their focuses. None of the senior roles or board roles are filled by women in her company. Shrestha Anill's company doesn't have any information about it at all. After looking around at other's blogs I also found that Josh McNamara company had the same Corporate Governance Statement as my company, and also commented on how many women fill positions in his company. 

Key Concepts & Questions

Chapter 3

Reading through this chapter, I was quite intrigued when I learnt that a firms annual report are marketing documents. I never seen my companies reports this way, but in retrospect I definitely understand it. The reports were simple, with brightly chosen colours, a clean and concise set up, appealing to the eye and engaged the reader.

I never knew before that New Zealand’s end of financial year is on the 31^st of March. How interesting! I like that the author compared balance sheets to that of a persons eyes, nose and mouth. As I was looking through my own companies balance sheet, I found it relatively easy to understand, however when browsing through other peoples I found they were somewhat jumbled up, a lot different to mine and they used some similar words, some words I had never heard of. However when it all boils down to it, each firm have similar expenses, similar assets and similar liabilities, (like faces we all have similar eyes, noses & mouths)I can definitely understand how having a hard copy version of an annual report would be a lot easier to use. Taking footnote numbers, and scrolling away to hunt down those numbers, then going back to the balance sheet was tiring, and at times confusing.

I found that it was quite a bit easier to understand my companies balance sheets because they had provided the previous years financial numbers, which allowed me to compare how well or poorly they had done this year as compared to last, and it allowed me to understand where all these figured had developed from. I think that if balance sheets only provided one year (which was the current year) of financial figures of the company, it could be quite misleading.

Statement of changes in equity was difficult for me to understand because I do not fully understand what equity means.

I understand the term trust, and what it means in the world of business. I understand trust as providing a business with equity such as resources that will be used to generate future value and be able to repay its equity.

I really enjoyed that this study guide provided more than just information on our annual reports. The addition of works by experienced practitioners was quite valuable. As I learnt about Warren Buffet, I found myself really interested in knowing more, and once this assignment is submitted I’ll be hunting down his annual Chairman’s letter.

I always thought that annual reports were just a breakdown for those interested of what had happened in that particular company, on the financial side for that year. However, the statement “we should use a firm’s financial statements to help us engage with key aspects of our firm’s economic and business realities”  changed my idea, and enabled me to understand that these reports are much more than that, they should be used to help us engage and better understand what’s happening in a business. Like in chapter 1, my views are changing quite substantially from just seeing the numbers of the business, to understanding why we have these numbers, what do they mean, where did they come from, what can they tell us about that business, and what does this mean for the future of the business. I’ve found that this course has certainly got me asking a lot of questions!

Shares and dividends has certainly always been an area of difficulty for me. I’m still struggling to understand the full information. My company pays full franked dividends to its investors, which I found out means that the company pays the tax on these shares, and that the investors can claim a credit for the money paid in tax. So, I’ve learnt a little about shares, but I’d like to delve deeper into the information behind dividends to make my own assumptions, maybe even look into investing. It is an exciting world that I’m interested to learn more about.

Key Concepts & Questions

Chapter 1

Before I started this course, if you asked me “what is accounting”, I probably would’ve given some answer such as “the finance of a business” or “all the businesses accounts”. However, it’s after reading such an insightful chapter such as “A way of viewing business” that I took all these misconstrued ideas I had, and tossed them out the window. Because accounting so much more than just numbers. Yes, it still involves the numbers of a business, but I believe that accounting is the heart of a business. It gathers information on a firm’s economic and business realities, and allows us to deconstruct, and decipher what’s happening in the business, what’s especially happening with the financial side.

Personally, I don’t see how accounting could in any way hinder a business. I can definitely see how it would help to connect us to the firm better.

I did find it quite interesting that half of the directors of companies within Australia and New Zealand have accounting qualifications, which made me question, why? Is it so that they’re able see a business differently, that they understand the economic and business realities of a firm, and can look at them with a different outlook than just an unqualified person? Or are they sourced particularly because they’ve got accounting backgrounds? I’m interested to research further and know the answer, it’s a bit like which came first the chicken or the egg.

Reading through, I’m still a bit fuzzy on a trust type of business. I guess if there was an example it possibly could’ve helped, but I think I’ll need to do more research to simplify my idea of what a trust is when it comes to business.

Reading about ledgers and journals drummed up accounting years in high school, where I would enter any asset entry into the books, with a corresponding opposite entry. I smiled reading through this part of the book, because it was something I understood and was familiar with! Also really helped knowing a bit of the background of how double-entry book keeping was thought up.

I’m still to gain a firmer understanding on the term equity. At the moment I’ve got ideas floating around my head of what equity is, but I still need to learn a bit more about it to concrete those words in. However, assets, liabilities, revenue & expenses, I understand all those elements quite well.

Key Questions

- Whilst reading through SEEK's financial reports, I notice the acronym "EBITDA" is used quite frequently.
What is this abbreviated from?

- Also in the financial reports, I noticed that the acronym "NPAT" is also used frequently.
What is this abbreviated from?


- In the annual report for 2012, declared total dividends are fully franked?
What does this term mean? How does it affect it's shareholders and what affect does it have on the company?

- SEEK has chosen to not issue short-term incentives (STIs) as part of the new remuneration framework for executives. The company is of the opinion that these incentives are detrimental to the long term sustainability, and that the link between effort and outcome cannot be satisfied at short notice.
Does anybody else's company offer STI's? Or has your company chosen to scrap these as well?

- SEEK has included in the report under Diversity, that the overall female employee representation for 2013 is 54%. Why do they include this? It's under the Corporate Governance Statement and I wonder if this is something they have to comply with, or is it part of SEEK's own diversity policy?

Key Concepts

Finance figures of SEEK
- 40% growth in revenue on 2012 results to A$620.2 million
- EBITDA growth of 24% to A$239.6 million
- NPAT growth of 8% to A$141.1 million [excluding significant items]
- Declared fully franked total dividends of 22c per share, a 27% increase on 2012.




Factual figures of SEEK
- SEEK is accountable for over 70% of online job ads
- SEEK enrols approximately 50,000 students, whilst providing education to another 20,000 students per annum.
- 30 million monthly visits within Australia
- 330 million monthly visits internationally

Future Focus of SEEK
- The focus of the SEEK management team is to continue to evolve their products and services to streamline the search & matching of a career, education and volunteer opportunities, ensuring SEEK to be the most effective and efficient search engine. 
These future goals underpin continued strong growth in the companies financials.

Placement strategy of SEEK
- The company have intentions of being the number #1 online employment website globally. 
- SEEK's goal is to help facilitate an unrivalled share of placements for recruitment agencies, corporations and small/medium sized enterprises. 
- Providing jobseekers with an easy to use, efficient job search & application hub. 
- Within a 12 month period, SEEK helped to facilitate a total of 26% of job placements in Australia alone, allowing SEEK to surge forward to be the clear market leader. 
- When compared with all other online competitors, (jobsearch.gov.au, careerone.com.au, mycareer.com.au, linkedin.com) SEEK accounts for ~8 times the number of placements.
- Ultimate goal is that the answer to all employment & recruitment related questions will be "SEEK"
 - When asking all jobseekers where did they find their last job .. ?
the answer will be SEEK
 - When asking all recruitment agencies, and small/medium enterprises where did they source their last candidate ... ? 
the answer will be SEEK.

Ease of access to SEEK
- To ensure the SEEK web platform will be able to facilitate the influx of users, the support crew at SEEK have made improvements to their products and services.
- SEEK apps are now installed on over 2 million tablet and mobile devices
- SEEK tablet and mobile specific websites underwent an overhaul

Interesting readings from SEEK
- One of the many interesting concepts I found whilst reading through the financial reports of my company, is an initiative called the 'workplace giving program'. SEEK recognise the significance of positively contributing to the community in which it operates. Through collaboration with the Australian Charities Fund (ACF), seven charities were specially chosen by employees to make up the workplace giving program called 'Bright Futures" in where SEEK matches employee donations to any given charity to a capped amount.
- SEEK Green is a concept where the company is dedicated to minimising it's environmental impact, and creating sustainability. SEEK Green promotes good behaviours through initiatives, and implements improvements in the areas of waste reduction, recycling, cleaning, energy.

It's time to list my three favourite blogs; here they are in no particular order

1. Jade Thomas  and her company Beyond International Limited
I found Jade's blog extremely informative on her company. I like how Jade's kept up to date with Beyond Internationals latest news, her introduction about the company was very thorough and gave me a sound understanding about the company and all the aspects they cover. It was really interesting to know that most of the Board of Directors have all been there since the beginning, and it was also interesting to learn that due to underperformance restraints that B.I had to restructure the company. What I liked most was Jade provided further information on television shows, and miniseries that Beyond International distribute throughout Australia and New Zealand, that connected me more to the business through familiarity and mental availability. Great blog, I really look forward to learning more about the company.


2. Ben Patchett     and his company Asciano
I found that Ben's blog was effectively well written about his company. Ben provided fantastic news updates on his company, including news about delays to a port in NSW due to equipment damage, an update that I'm sure many people would be interested in knowing, also that his company will be cutting jobs due to upgrades in their profit targets, yet another fact that I'm sure people will be interested in. Ben is very thorough when reporting about his companies financial difficulties, as well as providing information on his companies future investment plans. I appreciate that Ben had difficulties reading some parts of his reports, but was able to source information externally to help decipher his reports, and enable him to read other companies reports with ease. Upon reading Ben's blog about Asciano, it's really difficult to believe that he doesn't work for the company, as he has provided extremely thorough and extensive insight into the workings of the company. I look forward to learning more about your company in the coming weeks.

3. Melinda Lynagh  and her company Ainsworth Gaming Technology
I found that Melinda's blog was extremely informative and provided great insight into her company. Melinda provided informative insight into the background of all the Board members of her company, and what I found most interesting that the founder of Ainsworth Gaming Technology, Len Ainsworth is also the founder of rival company Aristocrat Leisure, a company being looked after by Iris. Like I said, I found it really interesting that these two companies are complete rivals, and that in Jan 2014' Ainsworth Gaming Technology triumphed over it's rival Aristocrat to gain the rights to sell pokie machines in the state of Mississippi. Melinda has provided thorough and well supportive answers from the questions in the study guide, which has helped me gain a better understanding of some of the areas of my company. It was interesting to read about the concepts of her company, especially the employee's and their workplace, with the company stating their commitment to providing gender equality, and stamping out unethical behaviour through support and complete confidentiality in the "whistleblower" policy. I now understand that Ainsworth Gaming Technology are in charge of all new and existing licensing laws throughout certain countries. I really enjoyed reading about Melinda's company, and look forward to learning further about it.

SEEK - A little knowledge about a company we use so often, however know nothing about it's humble beginnings

Good morning!

It's on a gloomy, wet Monday morning like today, that I toss up the options of burying my head into studying accounting to gain qualifications that will enable me to get a decent job somewhere down the track, or whether to go online, apply for a few jobs in my area, see what jobs are available now and take the easy road.

So let me ask you this question, where is the first place you think of when you hear the words "apply for a new job" or "job hunting" - I can almost guarantee you would've answered SEEK.

It's just that simple these days! Gone of the days where seeking employment involved actively going out, job hunting. Dropping countless resumes and run-of-the-mill cover letters into each and every organisation you came across, face to face interaction, the countless "sorry we're not hiring at the moment" or "we'll keep your resume on file" - honestly the knock backs are enough to make you give up.

But times have since changed, and companies probably find it quite rare to have somebody walk in off the street to hand in their resume, because let's face it, do we really have time for that?

So how have we come so far? How are we able to know about these job vacancies at the click of a button, how come we can almost pick and choose what job or industry we want to work in and what ever happened to the mundane resume drops?

SEEK happened.

From it's humble beginnings, founded in Melbourne 1997, SEEK evolved from a domestic online employment classifieds business and has revolutionised the way we now look for jobs, with over 6,000 employees globally, 30 million monthly visits, displaying 70% of all online job advertisements, it's no wonder that SEEK is the leading employment website in Australia, and largest online global marketplace operating in 12 countries.

However what most consumers don't realise, is that SEEK offers much more than just a place to 'seek' employment. SEEK is a diverse group of companies, coming together to create a hub of education and opportunities;
SEEK learning was designed to assist job seekers in gaining further qualifications by providing vocational education through partnerships with 19 leading universities and colleges. Areas of interest included; creative, business, health, people, technology and building. Job seekers have the option to study in class, via distance or online with the ability to attend TAFE or university to complete their selected qualifications.
SEEK commercial is the online source of business and franchise sales, as it allows consumers to browse through extensive lists of business and franchises for sale, whilst providing in site and knowledge to consumers about the steps of buying, types of business and buying a franchise/business.
SEEK volunteer is the single most largest volunteer website in Australia. Offering those looking for volunteer work an extensive range of opportunities, including event, student, corporate, environmental and emergency options. These options aren't prejudice to age either, with options for kid friendly, high school aged and even options for volunteering as a group.

Is it any wonder that with all that SEEK covers, we no longer have to go far when seeking employment, seeking to buy a business or seeking volunteer work? SEEK has taken the hard work out of seeking, even revolutionising it's websites to allow seamless streaming between mobile, laptop and tablet allowing consumers to seek anywhere, anytime, any way.

Good evening everyone!

Well - here it is, my first blog. Who would've thought that in school, use of social media and blogs would be encouraged?!

Personally, I think it's fantastic.

So watch this space, the company I've been assigned to research is Seek. Awesome! I know the ins and outs of Seek due to overuse of it lately, so it'll be great to get behind the scenes and find out a bit more about a company we know nothing about, but use so often.

Thank you, and keep watching.