Equity research - Royal Mail PLC

Mestrado em FinançasA principal motivação na escolha do Royal Mail é entender o comportamento que ele terá nos próximos anos e os efeitos impactantes que o Brexit pode vir a causar numa grande empresa britânica. Estima-se que o crescimento econômico desacelere nos próximos anos, não apenas por toda a Europa, mas também a nível mundial. Assim, definindo os métodos de análise e avaliação da empresa através da estrutura CFA, foi feita uma estimativa de uma meta de preço. Sendo uma das maiores empresas do setor, a Royal Mail possui dois segmentos, sendo o primeiro referente à distribuição de cartas e encomendas no Reino Unido e o segundo referente à distribuição de encomendas na Europa, EUA e Canadá, tendo obtido um volume de receitas £ 10.581 milhões em 2019. Para avaliar o valor intrínseco do Royal Mail, o principal modelo de avaliação foi o Fluxo de Caixa Descontado (DCF) e a avaliação múltipla como modelo relativo para corroborar o principal. Por meio do modelo absoluto, foi possível verificar uma meta de preço para 25 de março de 2020 de £ 232,27 por ação, representando uma queda de 2,20% no período homólogo, o que significa que minha recomendação é de VENDA com alto risco. Além dos modelos de avaliação, análises de sensibilidade e simulação de Monte Carlo também foram utilizadas para apoiar esses resultados.The main motivation in choosing Royal Mail is to understand the behavior it will have in the coming years and the impacting effects that Brexit may have on a large British company. Economic growth is expected to slow down in the coming years, not only across Europe, but also worldwide. Thus, defining the methods of analysis and evaluation of the company through the CFA structure, an estimate of a price target was made. As one of the largest companies in the sector, Royal Mail has two segments, the first referring to the distribution of letters and parcels in the United Kingdom and the second referring to the distribution of parcels in Europe, USA and Canada, having obtained a volume of revenue £ 10,581 million in 2019. To assess the intrinsic value of Royal Mail, the main valuation model was the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) and the multiple valuation as a relative model to corroborate the principal. Through the absolute model, it was possible to verify a price target for March 25, 2020 of £ 232.27 per share, representing a 2.20% drop in the same period, which means that my recommendation is for SALE with high risk. In addition to the evaluation models, sensitivity analysis and Monte Carlo simulation were also used to support these results.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Portfolio Asset Allocation On a Sector Rotation Strategy Triggered by Fed\u27s Discount Rate

The purpose of this project is to evaluate sector rotation strategies to determine if they out-perform market index strategies. This work will focus on the development of a portfolio strategy that will give portfolio managers and small investors the possibility to obtain higher returns with lower exposure. At the same time, it will give life to the market as it is a dynamic and vivid strategy

Augmenting public sector data-driven decision support systems with expert knowledge: case of OTT

Public sector data-driven decision support systems are uniquely challenging to design due to the ramifications they have on the societal level. Accountability and ethical considerations require these systems to arrive at an equilibirium between accuracy and interpretability amid various implementation and data constraints. While these systems need to contribute to legitimate governance through reasoned and explainable decision-making, they also need to accurately model the policy outcomes they were designed to support. Inopportunely, inductive data-driven systems struggle to solve problems that rely on heuristic input. In this thesis, a particular knowledge engineering technique was adopted to augment a public sector Machine Learning decision support tool with domain expert knowledge. The case in question is OTT – a job-seeker profiling tool used by the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund to predict the long-term unemployment risks of their clients. Upon augmenting it with knowledge from caseworkers and data scientists associated with the project, some evidence was found that accounting for expert knowledge in probabilistic data-driven models can lead to a model that performs better on new out-of-sample data and is more in line with underlying domain rules. This yields important implications on the future of Machine Learning in the public sector as it opens up new potential use cases in avenues where 1) labelled training data is hard to come by, 2) a more generalizable model is preferred due to frequent changes in the surrounding context, 3) a model has to perfectly mimic domain logic for interpretability and explainability reasons.https://www.ester.ee/record=b5508371*es

Economic Valuation of Environmental Benefits and the Targeting of Conservation Programs: The Case of the CRP

The range of environmental problems confronting agriculture has expanded in recent years. As the largest program designed to mitigate the negative environmental effects of agriculture, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) has broadened its initial focus on reductions in soil erosion to consider other landscape factors that may also be beneficial. For example, preserving habitats can help protect wildlife, thus leading to more nature-viewing opportunities. This report demonstrates how nonmarket valuation models can be used in targeting conservation programs such as the CRP.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Does ownership structure matter? Three essays in finance

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Investigating new student affairs professionals' perceived readiness to utilize data analytics

The shortage of qualified administrators who can utilize data analytics means that institutions are not able to harness data analytics to its fullest potential in order to remain competitive in a higher education market that continued to reward institutions that embrace entrepreneurship. Examining how new student affairs professionals in US higher education institutions acquire skills and knowledge needed in order to use and implement data analytics is imperative to sustain institutions' survivability. The purpose of this study is to examine the level of readiness those new student affairs professionals possess in regards to the usage and implementation of data analytics that take place at US higher education institutions. New student affairs professionals who are currently employed and associated with professional organizations were surveyed to measure their perceived readiness in working with data analytics. This study found that new student affairs professionals are not ready to utilize data analytics to its fullest potential. Additionally, there is no difference in the perceived readiness to utilize data analytics between participants who graduated from master's level student affairs preparation programs and other master's programs. This study also found that the participants perceived data analytics as an important tool and there is no difference in the perceived importance of data analytics among the participants who report to VP of student affairs, provost/academic affairs, and other leadership entities. Furthermore, participants who actively sought data analytics knowledge and skills from sources other than a master's level preparation program perceive data analytics as more important than those who did not actively seek out this knowledge and information

The State of the Region: Hampton Roads 2016

This is Old Dominion University\u27s 17th annual State of the Region report. While it represents the work of many people connected in various ways to the university, the report does not constitute an official viewpoint of Old Dominion or it\u27s president, John R. Broderick. The report maintains the goal of stimulating thought and discussion that ultimately will make Hampton Roads an even better place to live. We are proud of our region\u27s many successes, but realize that it is possible to improve our performance. In order to do so, we must have accurate information about where we are and a sound understanding of the policy options open to us.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/economics_books/1002/thumbnail.jp

The Chain-Link Fence Model: A Framework for Creating Security Procedures

A long standing problem in information technology security is how to help reduce the security footprint. Many specific proposals exist to address specific problems in information technology security. Most information technology solutions need to be repeatable throughout the course of an information systems lifecycle. The Chain-Link Fence Model is a new model for creating and implementing information technology procedures. This model was validated by two different methods: the first being interviews with experts in the field of information technology and the second being four distinct case studies demonstrating the creation and implementation of information technology procedures. (169 pages

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT-LINKED INVESTMENT COMPANIES IN MALAYSIA ON THE PERFORMANCE AND EARNINGS-MANAGEMENT OF THEIR PORTFOLIO COMPANIES

Research into the impact of government ownership on the financial performance and earnings-management of listed companies typically makes the assumption that the government is a monolithic entity and fails to consider that government ownership rights are usually administered by different types of government organisations. This thesis comprises two empirical studies to investigate whether the existence of different government investment organizations in Malaysia (called government-linked investment companies or GLICs,) which have differing objectives and control structures, also have different results in terms of performance and earnings-management. The portfolio companies that GLICs manage are known as government-linked companies (GLCs). The first empirical project explores the impact of GLC ownership structure (relating to the different group of GLCs, GLICs ownership concentration in GLCs, the existence of golden-share provisions and the presence of senior civil servants and of politicians on the boards of directors of GLCs) in terms of corporate performance as measured by accounting and market data. Using panel data of GLCs listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia between 2004 and 2008, we provide evidence that in Malaysia the impact of government ownership on the financial performance of government-controlled listed companies varies depending on the type of organization managing the government’s ownership stakes. In the second empirical project, we investigate the impact of ownership structure (ownership types, blockholders and managerial ownership) on earnings-management practices of listed companies on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia. This involved 2696 firm-year observations between 2004 and 2008. We provide evidence that firms in our sample indeed managed their reported earnings upward; firms controlled by private blockholders engage in earnings-management practices at a higher magnitude than GLCs controlled by government blockholders. Between the GLCs, we found no evidence of the impact of different GLICs had on GLCs earnings-management practices. This research is of interest to policy makers such as government, GLICs or regulators. In addition, the findings from both empirical projects are of potential interest to portfolio investment companies and minority or foreign investors who might either benefit from the presence of blockholders or might be exploited by their power to pursue self-interested objectives rather than shareholders’ value