Table of contents 1.1: Introduction 3 1.2: Country Road’s Mission 3 1.3: Background summary of Country Road’s products and services 4 1.4: Key Competitors 4 1.5: Competitive Strategy 6 1.6: Economic factors 7 2.1: Financial Statement Analysis 9 2.1.1: Common Size Analysis 9 2.1.2: Ratio Analysis 10 2.1.2 (a): Profitability 10 2.1.2 (b): Liquidity 11 2.1.2 (c): Capital Structure 12 2.2: Book value per share to the market value per share 14 2.3: Changes in the CEO 14 2.4: Auditor firm and the audit partner 15 2.5: Non Audit Services by the Auditor 15 2.6: Issues raised by the Auditing Firm 16 Appendix 17 Reference 21
1.1: Introduction
The company of Group #3 is Country Road Limited (CTY). Country Road is an upscale retailer of branded products including quality apparel, homewares and related accessories, with a great number of freestanding store and department store concessions in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Country Road is on the list of the Australian Stock Exchange and it is a subsidiary of a South African company Woolworths Holdings which owns an 88% interest. The company’s home page http://www.countryroad.com.au/ shows about its productions, activities and other information. The URL of Country Road’s annual reports for the latest two years are attached, in descending chronological order:
Country Road Annual Report for the year ending 2009: http://www.countryroad.com.au/documents/2009_Annual_Report.pdf Country Road Annual Report for the year ending 2008: http://www.countryroad.com.au/documents/2008_Annual_Report.pdf 1.2: Country Road’s Mission
There is not a stated mission in Country Road’s annual report. It, however, has its aim or maybe insistence as it is a company. This can be seen on its web site and also the annual
