My KCQs for Asciano

I have decided to put my KCQs on the blog as well as moodle to try and keep everything all in one spot and easy to find. I feel like things are a bit too spread over different sites at the moment and it's hard to keep track of it all. So here they are -

Challenges and solutions
Asciano are at the mercy of the fluctuating Australian dollar, slumps in world markets and a soft aussie economy.
The overseas demand for Australian minerals and agricultural commodities impacts the annual haulage and ports throughput with less imports and exports, while a weak australian economy means less demand for domestic freight haulage services.
Asciano seem to be actively chasing new customers to keep volumes up and diversifying their services in order to provide a buffer from these problems.
They also have an investment plan for new infrastructure such as cranes for container terminals and in 2012 wholly aquired C3 in New Zealand which is a marshalling and ports operator for the forestry industry.
According to the 2013 annual report Ascianos investment in major projects have shown a good returns on capital employed at 11% and are on track to meet their weighted cost average ROCE targets by 2015.
Another way they are looking to save money is they have a 5 year plan for improving business processes and finding general cost reductions. The target is a saving of $150 million by year five. At the end of year two they have so far found a way to cut costs by $82 million and are expected to meet or exceed their year three target.
Financial statements, difficulties and comparisons
So far I have been able to find an answer to the things that I did not understand in either the footnotes or on google. I am sure that I will find more things to confuse me over the next few weeks.
The 2010 financial statement and its figures are so different from the  2011 report onwards that it may as well be for a completely different company. There was obviously a big change in what and how Asciano reported during that time.
I have skimmed a couple of other companies financial statements so far and for the most part I have been able to decifer them with the knowledge I have gained from learnng to read mine. They are basically pretty similar so far though descriptions of things and the length and content of the footnotes obviously varies.
I am happy with the firm I have been given. The only concerns I have at this stage are not that I do not understand the information we have been given but that we are spread out over many different websites. Keeping up with peerwise, posting on moodle and the blog and checking facebook and then trying to crosslink comments on others blogs and so on seems distracting. I feel like am spread a bit to thin and it am not spending enough time studying the info in the chapters properly because I am all over the web at once. I guess my concern is because we need to do things in so many places that I will miss something and lose marks for it. No concerns with the material yet though.
Originally posted here

Now I need to figure out why Asciano is carrying a large amount of accumulated losses as shown in the Equity section of the question below. It may be to do with buying out C3 in New Zealand but I need to do some more digging to be sure.

Chapter 1 Question 1.2

Three Assets
1) Trade and other receivables - $55.4m. Money earned that has been payed or is owed to the company for work and services performed as part of the firms operations .

2) Inventories - $32.3m. Plant, equipment and consumables held in inventory. Mostly spare parts and consumables for maintenance activities.

3) Plant property and equipment - $3,926.4m. Buildings, facilities, vehicles and equipment that is used to generate income.

Three Liabilities

1) Current tax liabilities - $52.1m. The tax on income for the current period.

2) Trade and other payables - $393.6m. Accrued expenses and money owed for various activities relating to the operating of the business.

3) Provisions and employee benefits - $93.1m. Money set aside for things like workers compensation claims, money for restructuring, to cover the expected cost of incidents with trains and such like and retired employee travel passes.

Three Items of Equity
1) Contributed equity - $8,606.1m. The shares in the company owned by equity investors.

2) Reserves - ($4,703.5m). A combination of various reserve items e.g. employee equity benefits reserve, hedge reserve, treasury share reserves. Basically money held aside for various reasons to cover future payments of equity.

3) Accumulated losses - ($282.6) Could not find a good explanation for this one. But I think it is losses carried over from previous years, a leveraged buy out or perhaps from adjustments made to intangible items such as goodwill. Which is possibly to do with the acquisition of C3 in NZ.

Some recent news for Asciano

The columns full of numbers in a financial report don't necessarily give you an appreciation of what's happening in the daily life of the business.

Port and rail operator Asciano will cut dozens of jobs after upgrading profit targets due to growth in its Pacific National Coal division.
The Australian 

Asciano will be forced to push back the completion date of its Port Botany project in NSW after crucial automation equipment was damaged.
The Australian

Asciano’s 2013 statutory net profit has fallen by $5.6 million after it restated earnings to comply with new accounting standards on employee benefits.

SMH

Australian rail and port operator Asciano Ltd. (AIO.AU) said profit dipped in its fiscal first half due to extra costs in the redevelopment of a major port in Sydney, and as weak domestic growth weighed on some of its divisions. 

Wall Street Journal 

Welcome

Hi my name is Ben. I work full time and have a 2yo son so I usually only get time to do one subject a term. I am working my way through a Bachelor of Business majoring in Purchasing and Supply.
I am a qualified painter and decorator with some years of retail under my belt now doing some contract management amongst other things in the power industry.

My company is Asciano who are the largest and only combined national rail freight and ports operator in Australia.
They comprise of Pacific National Coal, Pacific National Rail and Patricks Stevedoring.
Asciano is one of the 50 largest companies listed on the ASX with -

• 8000 full time employees
• 975,385,664 fully paid ordinary shares
• $3,727.7 million*
• EBITDA - $1,000.6 million* 
• CEO - John Mullen
• Head Office - Sydney