Master-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2007.

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No description available.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Vincent R. Amanor-Boadu / There is an opportunity to develop an instant noodle manufacturing plant in Argentina to manufacture and market branded and private-label instant noodles. This opportunity has arisen from a number of factors. First, the increasing time compression that confronts consumers has created an emergence of consumers who are looking for quick meals that are also healthy. Second, the growing incomes that are being experienced across all income classes have created a demand for processed food products across all consumer markets. Third, potential competitors are not seeing the market trends and, thus, create an opportunity to gain a first mover advantage in this burgeoning market. Finally, the policies that are being developed by the government have created an import-replacement mentality that presents significant opportunities to build specific strategic alliances to seize an opportunity such as this one. This thesis presents the feasibility of seizing this opportunity to build a manufacturing facility to produce and market instant noodles in Argentina. It assesses the technical and economic dimensions of the feasibility process and presents financial analyses of the potential outcome for investors. The researcher is leading the project and participating in the investment process. Therefore, the outcome of this thesis has direct implications for the wellbeing of the researcher beyond partial fulfillment of degree requirements. The results show that the opportunity is credible and profitable over a 20-year period. The Net Present Value of the investment is positive and its Internal Rate of Return of 26 percent is higher than the company’s hurdle rate of 15 percent. To this end, it suggested that the investment must go ahead. However, the sensitivity analysis shows that at the initial production level of 60,000 packets per shift, the project is very sensitive to the number of shifts that are run per day. Indeed, if the company runs one shift for the first three years instead of the first two years and two shifts for the next three years instead of Years 3 and 4, the project is not economically feasible. On the other hand, building a larger plant, one that produces 120,000 packets per shift, protects the plant from this vulnerability. The internal rate of return is 40 percent and the NPV is in excess of $5 million over 20 years. Therefore, the recommendation is to build the larget plant and enhance the robustness of the plant.

EVA® is a performance metric that calculates the creation of shareholder value and is a registered trademark of Stern Stuart, New York. EVA® has been widely adopted by management when making decisions to increase productivity, where to invest new capital and which underperforming assets to liquidate. EVA® is also widely used by investors and analysts as a measure of company performance when deciding on which shares to invest in. While extensive research was done on EVA® and share price performance internationally, the aim of this research was to determine whether a positive EVA® leads to growth in its share price, specifically for retail and banking shares listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE). The banking and retail sector was selected as both these sectors experience favourable growth in terms of turnover during decreasing interest rate periods and unfavourable growth during increasing interest rate periods. Thus EVA® was selected as one of the better performance measures to use to show true operating performance. Statistical tests were done on turnover growth rates, EVA® growth rates, EVA® and Turnover, EVA® and Share Price growth and finally EVA® and other common performance measures. Common performance measures were limited to Price/Earnings, Earnings Per Share, Return On Assets and Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation. After analysis of the results, it was found that turnover growth rates were statistically similar for the banking sector during the period 1998 to 2007, but not for the retail sector. Leading on from that it was found that share price correlates well with EVA® for the banking sector however not for the retail sector. The study also further revealed that none of the common performance measures correlated well with EVA for both the banking and retail sector. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

M.Comm.

Literature in business associations reveals an efficient confluence of business to provide member firms with benefits obtained from cooperation with other firms in the industry. They assist firms through knowledge building, knowledge deployment, and standard setting. They can particularly play an important role in the areas of market integration, source of information, lobbying for regulation, standard setting and policy. Studies have also shown that lack of political influence helps discourage good governance or the ability to manage public affairs and deliver basic services; when acting alone individual firms may not be capable of taking part effectively in the interchange with government. This study involved a qualitative study which consisted of case studies and in-depth face to face interviews with association and member companies’ executives that are actively involved in business association activities in the South African Steel industry. The study concluded that business associations arise for different reasons and in different environments, to assist business with meeting certain challenges; they can sometimes play a positive role by making up for failing development institutions but they can also be detrimental to social welfare because of rent-seeking behaviour. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

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A distribution center that services value-added operations in addition to its normal operations faces a design problem: How to configure the forward/reserve departments for both of these operations. Analytical models are developed to analyze the tradeoff between floorspace and labor efficiency. Our results indicate that the best distribution center design is dependent on a company's customer demand profile as well as the relative cost of floorspace and labor. / Master of Science