You are working as a graduate within the engineering department of manufacturing and consulting focused public listed company. You and your team are working on the post-COVID recovery and how best to allocate capital. Your team has $1,000,000 in the capital at their disposal. The entire department is going to have a conference call next week and you have been asked to prepare a memo for the team regarding the financial options being considered. As the accounting department will be joining your memo is to prepare the staff for the call. The accountants are expected to use terms which may not be fully understood by the greater department. So your memo will be distributed before the call or you may be asked to speak on the call to assist everyone's understanding. The memo should discuss each of the following:

1. As there is still uncertainty about employees returning to work the capital may need to be moved from its current interest-bearing account elsewhere. Explain the opportunity cost associated with leaving the money in a bank account as opposed to other investment options that may mitigate that opportunity cost.

2. The stock price of your company has suffered due to the economic downturn. A focus at the company may be to encourage both current and prospective shareholders. Explain one way that the company could deploy company-wide excess capital to directly incentivise these investors.

3. Your company has been using traditional costing and is considering moving to Activity Based Costings for a number of product lines. Explain what is meant by Activity-Based Costings, how it differs from traditional costing, and how it may be advantageous.