Unfocused Books is a discount retail bookshop that has three departments: fiction, non-fiction and children's books. Sales and cost of sales for each department are shown below. In addition, each department has its own fixed costs for staffing and takes a one-third share of rental and management costs for the Bookshop as a whole.
Fiction
Non-Fiction
Children's
Sales
250,000
100,000
75,000
Cost of sales
45%
50%
55%
Departmental costs
50,000
35,000
35,000
Shared fixed costs
30,000
30,000
30,000
What is the profitability of Unfocused Books' three departments and what recommendations would you make to the owners?
2 Greentown Industries sells its transport services at a range of prices to five different customer groups. The company has fixed costs of £150,000 per year. The average variable costs for each transport service, irrespective of customer group, is £7. The Table below shows the prices charged to each customer group and the quantity of transport services that are currently sold at that price.
Customer group
Selling price
Quantity
Multinational
£19
13,000
Corporate
£20
12,500
Small business
£21
12,000
Government
£22
11,000
Private
£23
10,000
a. If the average selling price is £21, calculate the breakeven point in quantity and money terms and draw a rough sketch of a cost-volume-profit (CVP) graph that shows the relationships between the elements of CVP.
b. Ignoring any market demand or capacity limitations, calculate the optimum selling price for Greentown Industries and identify which customer group is most profitable.
Use the following information to answer part (c)Assume that the maximum market demand for each customer group is 20,000 transport services at the same price as currently charged (see Table above).
Also assume that Greentown's capacity limitation is 60,000 transport services.
c. Based on the calculation of optimum selling prices in (b) above but with the capacity and demand assumptions taken into consideration, calculate the maximum profits that Greentown can earn and the customer mix and quantity by which that profit can be achieved.
3 General Consulting plc has four divisions, whose summary profit reports are shown below:
(in £'000)
I.T.
Finance
Strategy
M&A
Total
Income
1,200
1,700
900
1,500
5,300
Variable staff costs
600
900
350
600
2,450
Contribution margin
600
800
550
900
2,850
Fixed costs
471
885
804
490
2,650
Operating profit/(loss)
129
(85)
(254)
410
200
The senior partners are considering whether or not to continue with the Finance and Strategy consulting activities as these have consistently been loss-makers. The Chief Accountant has advised the senior partners that business-wide costs which are included in fixed costs total £1,200,000. Business-wide costs will continue irrespective of the closure of any division. Those costs are allocated to the four divisions in proportion to their income. The remaining fixed costs in each division are attributable to that division and cover the cost of staff whose expertise means that they can only work in that division. If a division is closed, these fixed costs would be avoidable.
a.Present the financial information in a more meaningful form, showing the contribution each division makes to total profitability
b.Ignoring any redundancy payments, advise the senior partners as to
i.which, if any, divisions should be closed, and
ii.the likely profit, assuming constant sales, if those divisions were closed.
c. By re-presenting the financial information, explain the consequences to remaining divisional profitability if any division is closed.