Click the Original, Code and Reconstruction tabs to read about the issues and how they were fixed.

Original


Source: IBISWorld Pty Ltd 2019.


Objective

The chart highlights Coca Cola Amil’s achievements in terms of total revenue and net profit after tax from 2015 to 2019. With the financial picture drawn from this chart, shareholders and stakeholders will be easier in comparing the profits as well as the revenue over the years from operating models being implemented. Thereby, they can consider the potential finance of the company and make a decision whether to continue investing or not. In simpler terms, this chart can be viewed as an analytical tool that helps people in concern to have a more comprehensive view of the performance of Coca Cola Amatil over a certain financial cycle.

The visualisation chosen had the following three main issues:

  • This chart with dual axes regarding total revenue and net profit after tax make it hard for most people to intuitively make right statements about two data series.

  • With the use of two hot tones - dark red and orange, the chart seems to limit the viewer’s attention net profit after tax, and thereby make it difficult for the viewers to see the results. Moreover, red can challenge people who are red-green-blind in an attempt to understand the transmission of this chart.

  • There are some differences of total revenue between primary data and secondary data. This may indicate the issue of data integrity, especially data quality. It is important to know that financial information requires a high degree of accuracy as it can influence investor decisions. Therefore, although the difference between the two data sources is not too large, this inaccuracy can leave people in concern with subjective views of the company’s financial context.

Reference

Code

The following code was used to fix the issues identified in the original.

library(ggplot2)
library(cowplot)
cocacola <- data.frame(Year = c("2015", "2016", 
                                  "2017", "2018", "2019"),
                      Total.Revenue = c(5186.9, 5180.1, 4754.3, 4802,5112.1),
                      Net.Profit.After.Tax = c(393.4, 246.1, 445.2, 279,374.4))

pp <- ggplot(data=cocacola, aes(x = Year, y = `Total.Revenue`, group=1)) +
  geom_line(alpha=1, color="orangered2") +
  geom_point(color="orangered2") +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks=c(seq(0,6000,1500)), limits = c(0, 6000)) +
  scale_colour_hue()+labs(title=" Total Revenue (AUD $m)")
pp2 <- ggplot(data=cocacola, aes(x = Year, y = `Net.Profit.After.Tax`, group=1)) +
  geom_line(alpha=1, color="olivedrab") +
  geom_point(color="olivedrab") +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks=c(seq(0,480,120)), limits = c(0, 480)) +
  scale_colour_hue()+labs(title="Net Profit After Tax (AUD $m)")

Data Reference

Due to some errors about total revenue in IBIS World source, the new graph will be provided by a new dataset collected from Coca-Cola Amatil annual reports as below:

Reconstruction

The following plot fixes the main issues in the original.