Background of Harvest Road
4.1 Harvest Road was established in 1996 and publicly listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in September 1999. It has a market capital of $15 million with 90 million shares issued in the market (at the price of $0.165 per share as at 7 April 2007 ? refer to Appendix A). Having its headquarters based in Perth, Western Australia, Harvest Road has branch offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Mexico City.
4.2 Harvest Road specializes in the field of information technology ("IT") and is involved in the development of specialised content management systems (i.e. online learning and knowledge management systems) for use in organisations. It has an impressive client portfolio which includes government bodies (i.e. Latin American Institute of Educational Communication ? a United Nations organization), multi-national companies as well as universities.
4.3 The company is also the developer of the HarvestRoad Hive's®, a software designed to meet the functional and implementation demands of various national and state-based curriculum content management requirements. On this note, the HarvestRoad Hive's® was used in integration with WebCT, WebMentor and Blackboard LMS which are deployed at Open Learning Australia (a consortium of seven universities ? including Griffith University and Murdoch University) and several other universities in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
Analysis of financial statements of Harvest Road
4.4 In order to evaluate the business success and long-term business viability of Harvest Road, it is essential to perform analysis on the company's operating performance (i.e. efficiency and effectiveness in utilizing resources to produce returns on investments) as well as financial ...