Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 K56 / Master of Science

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1955 C67 / Master of Science

The study was conducted to establish what effect life cycle cost forecasting accuracy has on project valuations with special reference to a global mining organisation’s coal business unit in South Africa. The research stemmed from the fact that the organisation identified through its own research in 2009 that its capital projects rarely met the originally budgeted life cycle cost forecasts estimated during the project development stages. These forecasts were generally found to be underestimated. Overrunning of cost budgets in project management terms results in project failure. The study employed two main empirical research sections. The first section took a case study approach where past implemented project results were collated and analysed. The main aim was to determine how close to reality the original life cycle cost estimates were, and secondly how any variances to the originally budgeted costs impacted on the anticipated project value post implementation. Secondly, the study employed in-depth interviews with seven project specialists within the organisation that were also involved in the development stages of the investigated projects. The study concluded that life cycle cost forecasts are very important project business case inputs and that the necessary time and effort should go into developing them so as to ensure that they are as comprehensive and accurate as possible. The sensitivity analysis that was conducted revealed that a coal mining project business case is the second most sensitive to variations in life cycle costs after variations in commodity price. The results indicated that a 20% increase in life cycle costs can destroy an equivalent project value of up to 100%. Accurate life cycle cost forecasting is therefore essential in order to estimate to a certain degree of accuracy the value of a project which in turn will be used to inform capital investment decision making. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

This thesis consists of an introductory chapter and four self-contained essays on the value relevance of financial statement information. Essay 1: The purpose of this essay is to examine relevance of environmental information from an investor’s perspective. The study proposes that the market value of companies will reflect both financial and environmental performance. The theoretical foundation of the study is the accounting based valuation theory outlined by Ohlson (1995). This study provides new insights into how environmental performance is reflected in the market value of Swedish companies listed on the Swedish Stock market. Essay 2: In financial accounting research, much effort has been devoted to study the relation between accounting earnings and stock prices. The primary purpose of the second essay is to investigate the effect of alternative return-earnings model specifications to the estimated returns-earnings relation, that is, the earnings response coefficients. The returns-earnings models investigated include the traditional earnings levels and changes, and models including analysts’ earnings forecasts based on Ohlson’s (1995) extended residual income model. Essay 3: Fundamental analysis research that focuses on the use of accounting information to estimate equity value, has surfaced as a central theme in market based accounting research of the 1990s (Lee, 1999). The purpose of third essay is to compare two different approaches to valuation based on the theory presented in Ohlson (1995) in terms of explanatory and predictive power of the value estimates. Both approaches are implemented with and without the use of analysts forecasts. Essay 4: In this essay data from the Swedish stock market is used to investigate the profitability of two different types of investment strategies based on fundamental-to-value ratios and past insider trading activity. The purpose of the research is to explore four related research questions: (i) Do accounting based trading strategies generate abnormal returns on the Swedish stock market?; (ii) Do trading strategies based on insider trading behaviour generate abnormal returns on the Swedish stock market?; (iii) Do insiders who buy stocks tend to favour value stocks and do insiders who sell stocks tend to dispose growth stocks?; and (iv) Are insiders able to discriminate between temporary high/low fundamentals and temporary low/high prices when buying/selling value stocks and growth stocks?

The study was conducted to establish what effect life cycle cost forecasting accuracy has on project valuations with special reference to a global mining organisation’s coal business unit in South Africa. The research stemmed from the fact that the organisation identified through its own research in 2009 that its capital projects rarely met the originally budgeted life cycle cost forecasts estimated during the project development stages. These forecasts were generally found to be underestimated. Overrunning of cost budgets in project management terms results in project failure. The study employed two main empirical research sections. The first section took a case study approach where past implemented project results were collated and analysed. The main aim was to determine how close to reality the original life cycle cost estimates were, and secondly how any variances to the originally budgeted costs impacted on the anticipated project value post implementation. Secondly, the study employed in-depth interviews with seven project specialists within the organisation that were also involved in the development stages of the investigated projects. The study concluded that life cycle cost forecasts are very important project business case inputs and that the necessary time and effort should go into developing them so as to ensure that they are as comprehensive and accurate as possible. The sensitivity analysis that was conducted revealed that a coal mining project business case is the second most sensitive to variations in life cycle costs after variations in commodity price. The results indicated that a 20% increase in life cycle costs can destroy an equivalent project value of up to 100%. Accurate life cycle cost forecasting is therefore essential in order to estimate to a certain degree of accuracy the value of a project which in turn will be used to inform capital investment decision making. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

This study is aimed at investigating the effect of mergers and acquisitions on the share prices and dividends involving South African companies in the food and beverage industry. A sample of 79 mergers from 1999 to 2005 was used. The data was analysed using the event study methodology and descriptive statistics. In addition, the paired t-test was also conducted to test the significance of the results. The results were presented using graphs, tables and charts. The results showed that target companies obtained negative abnormal returns during the announcement of mergers while acquiring companies on the other hand received positive abnormal returns. The results imply that it can no longer be generalized that target companies always win and acquiring companies lose during the merger activity. On the other hand, the dividends for target companies increased significantly after the merger, while the dividends for acquiring companies remained insignificantly negative after the merger. / Graduate School of Business Leadership / MBL

In essence, aspects of sports marketing can be viewed as a special case of marketing a brand. The brand-related marketing activities of rugby teams should therefore first focus on building awareness of the rugby team's brand. Branding is a new phenomenon in rugby, a sport that has recently become professional and commercialised in South Africa. Despite the importance of brands and consumer perceptions of brands, rugby unions in South Africa have not used a consistent definition or measurement technique to assess spectators' perceptions of rugby brands. If some understanding of spectators' perceptions of brands could be developed, rugby unions in South Africa might be able to determine the brand equity of their sports teams. The determination of brand equity defines what an organisation may be willing to invest in a brand, based on some type of expected return. Brand equity is a set of variables linked to a brand's name and symbol that adds to or subtracts from the value provided by a product or service to a organisation and/or that organisation's customers and can be grouped into four categories, namely brand awareness, brand associations, brand loyalty and perceived quality. By ascertaining spectators' awareness, the associations they make regarding the brands, as well as brand loyalty and perceived quality of the respective brands of the provincial, regional and national rugby teams of South Africa, the brand equity of these teams could be determined. The aim of this study was, therefore, to determine spectators' awareness of, their associations with, their loyalty to and their perceived quality of the respective brands of the provincial, regional and national rugby teams of South Africa so that the brand equity of these teams could be established. In this study it was found that the Stormers' brand had the highest brand awareness, but that the Springbok brand had the highest brand equity. / Business Management / D.COM (Business Management)

Natural resource–based economies are typically embedded in rural networks of production. In recent years, however, the privatisation of access rights and the organisation of markets have substantially transformed some of these rural economies. By using the case of the Icelandic coastal fisheries, this ethnographic study shows, on one hand, how property rights–based management regimes and markets have reconfigured rural economies by disentangling fishers from their community ties, leading to increasing investment and technological development in the industry. On the other hand, the case shows how daily economic ‘coping’ has re-entangled fishers in a web of money-mediated relations that have economised economic expectations from cost-awareness to increasing profit-making in the industry. This economisation of the fisheries’ economy, however, not only reconfigures forms of coordination and network ties, but also changes the social practices that lie at the heart of economic value itself: fishing and processing. Hence, the study shows how artisanal and labour-intensive industries cope with the ‘primacy of the economy’ not only by rationalising their operations towards economic efficiency, but also by recontextualising traditional forms of knowledge and technology for the collective construction of a new 'quality'-oriented market-niche. The consequences of this coping, however, are twofold: while on one hand this development has led to the valorisation of line-caught fish, coastal fisheries have become objects of financial speculation, leading to a paradoxical cycle of investment and technological problem-solving that is pushing the temporal and spatial boundaries of coastal fisheries in local networks of production. As a consequence, the meaning of ‘small boats’ as social backbone and symbol of rural independence is being contested. This study is not only of interest to scholars dealing with processes of economisation and marketisation of rural networks of production and natural resources, but also for those interested more generally in the role of markets, technology and changing economic practices of evaluation and valuation in contemporary capitalism.

Le pragmatisme et la pensée de John Dewey intéressent actuellement un nombre grandissant de chercheurs en philosophie et en sciences humaines. Cet intérêt se manifeste depuis quelques années en éthique appliquée au Québec. Cette recherche vise à cerner la pertinence de la pensée de Dewey pour ce mouvement philosophique. Bien que Dewey soit plus souvent connu pour ses idées progressistes en éducation, plusieurs autres facettes de sa pensée suscitent maintenant l’intérêt. Parmi celles-ci se trouvent l’éthique et les valeurs. Si la notion de valeur recèle une importance majeure en éthique appliquée, elle fait partie des grandes questions sous-jacentes à l’ensemble des écrits de Dewey. Malgré plus d'une soixantaine d’années séparant les derniers développements de Dewey sur les valeurs et la conception de l’éthique appliquée aujourd’hui, nous retrouvons plusieurs perspectives communes. Parmi celles-ci se trouve le rôle de la raison pratique dans la résolution de situations indéterminées; la localisation des valeurs dans la conduite humaine et l’attribution de valeurs; l’actualisation des valeurs et la construction de valeurs partagée; une démarche éducative, réflexive et transdisciplinaire ancrée dans l’action; l’emphase mise sur l’autonomie de jugement de l’individu ainsi que l’espace socioculturel propice au déploiement et la valorisation de cette autonomie. Nous terminons en soulignant la pertinence particulière de Dewey au niveau de sa conception transactionnelle de l’expérience humaine, sa tentative de surpasser la dichotomie entre faits/valeurs, sa distinction entre valeur et idéal, le rôle de la créativité en éthique, la possibilité de jugements responsables sur les valeurs ainsi que son cadre général d’enquête sur les valeurs.

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