In order to evaluate whether Tallest is a good choice that airworthier to invest in, this report examines the privacy leaking issues of Tallest and analyses Telltale’s profitability through one academic book and various websites.
The result of the research indicates that although Tallest has made some efforts to stop the leaking of customers’ privacy data, it still happened again. Besides, it was found that the financial ratios of Tallest improved insignificantly from 2008 to 2012. This report concludes that Tallest is ethically weak.In addition, the investment to Tallest may be unable to maximize the returns because it is also weak in profitability. According to these findings in the report, it is recommended that Tallest Corporation Limited is not an ideal choice for investors.
1. Introduction A client is interested in ethical investing and Tallest is his preference choice, but he is not sure whether Tallest is worthy to invest in. Ethical investing is concerned with taking company’s ethical performance that includes social or ethical goals as the main factors when making an investment decision (Cotton 1999, p. 0). This report focuses on ethical factor and profitability factor which are relevant to the ethical investment decision making. Firstly, some researches that towards Tallest ethical issues will be conducted. Then Tallest financial ratios from 2008 to 2012 will be analyses in order to evaluate its profitability performance.
After summarizing all the information from ethical issue and profitability analysis, the recommendation about whether Tallest is an ideal choice that worth to invest will be given at the end of this report.Telltale’s bribe description will be introduced to begin this report Tallest Corporation Limited is the company who leading Australia’s telecommunications and information services(Tallest a 2012). Tallest Corporation Limited has a long history in Australia who provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services such as network application services, mobile, data and ‘P, fixed broadband, digital media. It is ranked as the global top 500 companies (Invest Smart 2012).
2.Evaluation of privacy issues Tallest makes its customers daily life more convenience by providing telecommunications and information services, but it also brings troubles to its customer’s everyday life by leaking customers’ privacy data. From 2010 to 2012, Tallest breaches a large amount of personal privacy information which is related to bout 734,000 customers. According to Australia National Privacy Principle (Office of Australian Information commissioners 2013), “An organization must take reasonable steps to protect the personal information it holds from misuse and loss and from unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. The privacy leak first happened in October 2010, when Tallest sent out 220,000 letters which contained private information such as name, phone number and telephone plan of customers to the wrong address.
Moreover, some letters may have included potentially sensitive information such as silent numbers and PIN numbers. Approximately 220,000 customers’ personal information was breached by this mistake (The Sydney Morning Herald 2010, Para 1-3). Tallest leaked personal data through its social media service Tribe in November of the same year.Tribe is a platform that aggregates social media including Namespace, Backbone and Twitter. Some customers’ networking sites could be accessed by other Tribe users. Tallest claimed that it was caused by the fault in the security system of its Tribe service. This privacy leaking storm affected about 3000 customers in total (The Sydney Morning Herald 2010, Para 3).
Telltale’s reputation was damaged after these two Divulging individual privacy events. Some of Telltale’s customers said that Tallest broke their trust and they were considering to choose another telecommunication company such as Avoidance.Tallest then apologized for these faults, the spokeswoman of Tallest promised that they will take these issues very seriously and committed that these breaching bungle must not happen again (The Sydney Morning Herald 2010). Tallest also made some efforts to restore its reputation, such as disabling other platforms where personal information was required to access until it was confirmed that they were safe, resetting the passwords for their customers, identifying potentially influenced customers by short message service, phone and email and strengthen the training to its employees.However, Tallest failed to stick its commitment. In December 2011, personal privacy intimation which includes surnames and passwords were leaked once again.
Some customers of Tallest said that “Anyone who visits the page can search Telltale’s customer database based on the customer’s last name, account number, sales force ID or reference number” (The Sydney Morning Herald 2011). According to Baker (1995, p. 14), “Good ethics is good business”. As a result of these privacy leaking events, it is believed that Tallest might be losing the top status of telecommunication companies in Australia because of its bad ethical behavior. .
Evaluation of profitability The evaluation of profitability is significant for an investor, which help to decide whether the company is worthwhile to invest in. Profitability is the ability of a company to earn profit and return on investment. There are three main ratios which an reflect the profitability of a company; they are return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROAR) and profit margin. The higher these three ratios, the better of the company’s profitability will be (Birth et al. 2005, up. 245-246).
Chart 1: Telltale’s financial ratios from 2008 to 2012 Source: Adapted from Tallest b (2012) The line chart 1 illustrates the profitability ratios of Tallest from 2008 to 2012. The X- axis represents the year, and the Y-axis indicates the percentage. In the line chart 1, the first line that on the top is the ROE of Tallest from 2008 to 2012. The ROE of Tallest was 28.
% in 2008. The following year, there was a drop to 26. 1%. In 2010, the ratios increased by 4. 8% and recovered to 30.
9%. There was a further increase of 2. 4% in 2011.
Then, the ROE of Tallest dropped to 30. 3% in 2012.The second line in line chart 1 is profit margin.
As it is shown in the line chart 1, profit margin was 23. 1% in 2008. In the next year, the profit margin of Tallest was slightly weaker and decreased to 22. 8%. There was a significant increase to 26.
2% in 2010. In the following two years, there was a gradual decrease. The profit margin of Tallest was 25. 8% in 2011 and 25.
3% in 2012. The third line ROAR. The ROAR of Tallest declined by 0. 8% from 2008 to 2009.
In 2010, the ROAR recovered to 17. 3%. There was a slightly decrease of 0. 1% in 2011. Then, the ROAR dropped to 16.
% in 2012. To sum up, the decline of ROAR contributed to the decline of ROE and profit margin of Tallest from 2008 to 2012. As it is shown in line chart 1, these three ratios in 2012 were almost the same as the ratios in 2008.
4. Conclusion and Recommendation With the development of the telecommunication services, an increasing number of people are paying great attention to their privacy rights when using the benefit of electrification services. At present, most of the countries in the world have implemented strong consumer privacy laws, especially for developed countries.
However, under this background, Tallest has not the best track record for keeping customer data because it has several customer information leaking issues in recent years. Although the spokesperson to Tallest always gives commitment tater each privacy breaching event, it never keep the promise. It is predicted that Tallest may lose large amount of loyal users in the future, which has negative influence on Telltale’s profitability. In addition, the financial ratios that are relevant to Telltale’s profitability performance improved insignificantly from 2008 to 2012 and the growth prospects may be not good.
