Financial Objectives (AQA A Level Business): Exam Questions

Source A: Jet2 plc

Jet2 plc describes itself as the UK's leading provider of package holidays and its third largest airline. It is a public limited company with shares traded on the London Stock Exchange, based at Leeds Bradford Airport, and it employs more than 14 000 people. Steve Heapy is the chief executive.

The company sells two different things. A package holiday combines flights, a hotel and transfers in one booking. A flight-only seat is just the flight. In the year to 31 March 2026 Jet2 flew a record 20.83 million passengers, up 5%. Within that total, flight-only passengers rose 15% to 7.64 million while package holiday customers rose 1% to 6.62 million. Jet2 counts each package holiday customer once, while flown passengers are counted on every flight, outbound and return.

Customers pay for a holiday months before they take it, so money arrives long before the flight happens. At the year end the company held £3 292.5 million in cash and money market deposits, and net cash of £2 012.9 million.

The year's results were mixed. Revenue reached a record £7 482.1 million, up 4%. But operating profit fell 2% to £439.6 million, after absorbing £11.0 million of start-up costs for a new base at London Gatwick and £50 million of increased costs from employment taxes and sustainable aviation fuel. Profit before tax fell 7% and earnings per share fell 1% to 211.2p.

Shareholders were rewarded anyway. Jet2 returned £363.0 million to them during the year through share buybacks and dividends, raised the final dividend 2% to 12.4p a share, and announced a further £250 million buyback. The company says this reflects its strong liquidity and its confidence in the medium-term outlook.

Source: Jet2 plc preliminary results, 8 July 2026, and Companies House

Appendix A: Jet2 plc selected financial results

Source: Jet2 plc

Assess whether returning £363.0 million to shareholders was a sensible use of Jet2 plc's cash in a year when its operating profit fell.

Source B: Fairhurst Linen Ltd

Fairhurst Linen Ltd is a commercial laundry on an industrial estate outside Leeds. It is a private limited company owned by Dev Anand and his sister Rani Anand, and it employs 24 people. It washes, presses and delivers bed linen, towels and table linen for hotels and restaurants across Yorkshire, and it charges by the kilogram.

Last year it processed 3.1 million kilograms at an average of 60p a kilogram, which brought in £1 860 000. Detergent, water, energy and packaging cost 20p for every kilogram put through the machines. Everything else is fixed: wages of £624 000 and premises, machines, maintenance and insurance of £456 000, which together come to £1 080 000 a year and are paid whether the machines run or not. Profit for the year was £160 000.

The machines are not full. They could handle 4.2 million kilograms a year, and last year they did 3.1 million. A new tunnel washer costing £320 000 would raise that ceiling further, and Dev Anand has been talking to the bank about it.

The Anands have set themselves an objective: a profit margin of 15% within three years.

Two things complicate the plan. The first is a contract. A hotel group has offered Fairhurst Linen Ltd 900 000 kilograms a year, which would nearly fill the machines, but only at 44p a kilogram, against the 60p its other customers pay. The second is that Fairhurst Linen Ltd pays its detergent supplier, a small chemicals firm in Rotherham, after 90 days, while its own hotel customers pay it after 45.

Appendix D: Fairhurst Linen Ltd, summary of last year

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Fairhurst Linen Ltd is likely to reach its objective of a 15% profit margin within three years.

Calculate Fairhurst Linen Ltd's profit margin for last year to support your answer.

Give your answer to one decimal place.

Source B: Halvergate Storage Ltd

Halvergate Storage Ltd rents storage units by the month. It has three sites in East Anglia, at Norwich, King's Lynn and Lowestoft, with 1 200 units between them. It is a private limited company owned by two brothers, Tom and Michael Ferris, and it employs nine people.

Its customers are households between moves, people who have downsized, and small businesses storing inventory. A unit costs an average of £100 a month. Once a unit is let it costs Halvergate Storage Ltd about £12 a month in electricity, cleaning and administration. Everything else is fixed: staff of £290 000 a year and rates, insurance and maintenance of £186 000, which are paid on the whole building whether the units inside it are full or empty.

Last year 80% of the units were let, which is 960 of the 1 200, and revenue was £1 152 000. Operating profit was £537 760. After £152 000 of interest, profit for the year before tax was £385 760.

The interest is there because the sites were built with borrowed money. The three sites together represent capital employed of £4.2 million, of which £2.6 million is long-term bank loans and £1.6 million is the brothers' own money.

Tom and Michael Ferris have set the company an objective: a return on capital employed of 15% within three years. They are also looking at a fourth site, at Bury St Edmunds, which would cost £1.6 million.

Appendix D: Halvergate Storage Ltd, summary of last year

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Halvergate Storage Ltd is likely to reach its objective of a 15% return on capital employed within three years.

Calculate Halvergate Storage Ltd's return on capital employed for last year to support your answer.

Give your answer to one decimal place.

Source B: Marlowe Joinery Ltd

Marlowe Joinery Ltd makes bespoke staircases in a workshop outside Shrewsbury. It is a private limited company run by Gethin Marlowe, the third generation of his family to run it, and it employs 17 people, nine of them joiners who served apprenticeships there.

Every staircase is different. An architect or a builder sends drawings, Gethin Marlowe quotes a price, and if the quote is accepted the workshop builds it. Last year it made 560 staircases at an average price of £2 400, which is revenue of £1 344 000. Timber, fittings and the joiners' time on the job come to £1 560 a staircase. Everything else, meaning the workshop, the machinery, insurance, administration and the wages of people not on a job, comes to £392 000 a year.

The quoting is done by eye. Gethin Marlowe has forty years of it and is good at it, but each quote is its own small budget and nobody adds them up until the year end.

He is considering a computer-controlled cutting machine costing £340 000. It would cut the cost of a staircase to £1 410 and raise the workshop's fixed costs by £68 000 a year once depreciation and finance are counted. It would also lift what the workshop could make in a year from 600 staircases to 900.

The machine would be paid for by borrowing. Marlowe Joinery Ltd already has £280 000 of long-term loans against £620 000 of Gethin Marlowe's own money in the business.

Appendix D: Marlowe Joinery Ltd, summary of last year

Source: Analyst

Appendix F: Data for the cutting machine

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Marlowe Joinery Ltd should set itself the objective of making 900 staircases a year.

Source B: Ashgrove Print Ltd

Ashgrove Print Ltd is a commercial printer in Dewsbury. Ken Ashgrove started it in 1994 after fifteen years at a firm that lost its only large customer and closed in a fortnight, and he told his daughter Nadia more than once that he built Ashgrove Print Ltd so that nobody would ever again be able to tell him what to charge. Nadia Ashgrove has run it since 2021. It is a private limited company and employs 34 people.

The work comes in two kinds. Long-run work is leaflets and shelf-edge cards for Fenwold Stores, a supermarket group: high volume, printed to a price Fenwold Stores fixes, and paid for in 74 days. It brought in £2 472 000 last year and cost £2 100 000 in paper, ink, plates and press time. Short-run work is menus, packaging, programmes and art prints for about 300 small local customers: low volume, priced job by job, and paid for in 21 days, often on collection. It brought in £1 648 000 and cost £784 000.

Across all its customers, Ashgrove Print Ltd waits an average of 53 days to be paid. It buys paper from two mills on 30-day terms. Its agreed terms with its own smaller suppliers, the plate makers, the bindery, the finishers and the courier, are also 30 days. Last year it paid them on average in 61 days. Its overdraft facility is £150 000 and it was £96 000 into it at the year end.

Fenwold Stores has now offered Ashgrove Print Ltd all of its print work on a three-year contract. It would need a new press costing £340 000, which the bank will lend against. Appendix F sets out that future and the one Nadia Ashgrove has been building towards instead.

Appendix D: Ashgrove Print Ltd, income statement for last year

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Ashgrove Print Ltd should set a financial objective of increasing its operating profit or a financial objective of being paid more quickly.

Source A: Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd

Kids Planet Day Nurseries Limited runs day nurseries for children below school age. Clare Roberts set the business up in Cheshire in 2008 and has been a director since the August of that year. Its registered activity is pre-primary education and its head office is still in Lymm, near Warrington.

The company has grown mainly by buying other nurseries rather than by building new ones. It is now the parent of a group of 152 companies, most of them businesses it has taken over, and it holds 69 properties, 28 of which it owns outright and 41 of which it leases. It employs around 5 000 people. There is a single shareholder.

Growth has been fast. Turnover rose by 42.3% in the year to 31 March 2025, reaching £204.56 million, and cash at the bank more than doubled. But buying nurseries has been paid for largely by borrowing. The group's total liabilities are now slightly larger than its total assets, which means its net assets are negative. That figure is moving in the right direction: net assets improved from minus £16.04 million to minus £3.50 million over the year.

The number of children available to fill nursery places is not fixed. Live births in England and Wales have fallen in three of the past four years, from 624 828 in 2021 to 585 396 in 2025. Appendix B shows the trend. The government also pays for a set number of childcare hours for many families, so a nursery's income comes partly from parents and partly from the state.

The directors must now decide whether to carry on buying nurseries.

Source: information sourced from Companies House and the Office for National Statistics, 2026

Appendix A: Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd selected financial data

Source: Companies House

Appendix B: Live births in England and Wales

Source: Office for National Statistics

Appendix C: Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd scale

• Companies in the group = 152

• Properties held = 69 (28 owned outright, 41 leased)

• Employees = about 5 000

• Year the business was set up = 2008

Source: Companies House

Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd's directors must decide how the business should grow.

Evaluate whether Kids Planet Day Nurseries Ltd should continue to grow by buying other nurseries or should instead concentrate on filling the places it already has.

Source A: Games Workshop Group PLC

Games Workshop Group PLC designs, makes and sells fantasy miniatures, and the games and stories that go with them. Its main brand is Warhammer. The company is based at Willow Road in Nottingham, where it makes its models, and it is a public limited company whose shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange. Kevin Rountree is the chief executive. It employs about 3 000 people.

The company earns money in two quite different ways. Most of it comes from the core business: selling miniatures and books through its own shops, through independent retailers it calls trade accounts, and through its own website. The rest comes from licensing, which means letting other companies pay to use Warhammer characters and worlds in their own products, such as video games and television.

In the 52 weeks to 31 May 2026 the core business had its best year yet. Core revenue rose 10.9% to £626.8 million and core operating profit rose to £245.1 million. Licensing went the other way. Licensing revenue fell from £52.5 million to £32.9 million, and licensing operating profit fell from £49.5 million to £29.9 million.

Licensing matters more than its size suggests. It costs very little to run, because the company is selling permission rather than a product, so almost all of the revenue it brings in becomes profit.

Total revenue still reached a record £659.7 million and profit before tax a record £275.7 million. Earnings per share rose from 594.9p to 624.0p. Even so, the dividend paid during the year fell from 520p a share to 485p.

Games Workshop says its decisions are focused on long-term success rather than short-term gains, and that it intends to carry on making the best fantasy miniatures in the world forever.

Source: Games Workshop Group PLC results, 28 July 2026

Appendix A: Games Workshop Group PLC selected financial results

Source: Games Workshop Group PLC

Appendix B: Games Workshop Group PLC earnings, dividends and cash

• Earnings per share = 624.0p in 2026 (594.9p in 2025)

• Dividends per share declared and paid during the year = 485p in 2026 (520p in 2025)

• Net increase in cash before dividends paid = £210.3m in 2026 (£197.5m in 2025)

• Cash held at the end of the year = £182.9m

Source: Games Workshop Group PLC and Companies House

Appendix C: Extract from Games Workshop Group PLC's stated strategy

"Our ambitions remain clear: to make the best fantasy miniatures in the world, to engage and inspire our customers, and to sell our products globally at a profit. We intend to do this forever. Our decisions are focused on long-term success, not short-term gains."

"We nurture a craft based hobby. We understand that what we make may not appeal to everyone, so to recruit and retain customers we are absolutely focused on making our models the best in the world."

Source: Games Workshop Group PLC annual report, 2026

Games Workshop Group PLC held £182.9 million of cash at the end of the year.

Evaluate whether Games Workshop Group PLC should use this cash to rebuild its licensing business or to open more of its own shops.

Source A: The Gym Group plc

The Gym Group plc runs low cost gyms. It opened its first in 2008 and is now a public limited company with shares traded on the London Stock Exchange. It describes itself as a leading low cost gym operator and its offer as high value, low cost. Members pay by the month, there is no long contract to sign, and the gyms are open 24 hours a day.

The company calls its approach a labour light business model. Gyms are largely self-service, so a site can run with a small team, and the savings go into the price rather than into staff on the front desk. In the six months to 30 June 2026 The Gym Group had an average of one million members, up 5% on the same period a year earlier, and average revenue per member per month rose 5%.

Growth comes from two places. The company opens new gyms, and it improves the ones it already has. Four new sites opened in the first half of 2026, with eleven more being built, and it expects to open at least 20 during the year as part of a plan to open around 75 over three years, paid for out of its own cash. It also refurbishes older gyms to a newer design. Three were refurbished in the first half of 2026 and eighteen more were planned for the second half. Gyms refurbished during 2025 went on to win 10% more members than before.

The business is not short of demand, but it is carrying a lot of debt. At the end of 2025 its total liabilities were £474.2 million against total assets of £615.9 million, and it held only £3 million in cash. The company says its aim is a 30% return on the money invested in its mature gyms, and it is buying back some of its own shares.

Source: The Gym Group plc interim results, 9 September 2026, and Companies House

Appendix A: The Gym Group plc results for the six months ended 30 June 2026

Source: The Gym Group plc

Appendix B: The Gym Group plc financial position at 31 December 2025

Source: Companies House

The Gym Group plc expects to open at least 20 new gyms during 2026 and to refurbish 21 of its existing gyms during the year, all paid for out of the cash the business generates.

Evaluate whether The Gym Group plc should put more of that cash into opening new gyms or into refurbishing the gyms it already has.