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Yo, quit complaining about not being able to pass AA… this isn’t even Strategic level yet, you guys get MCQs in this level there’s no reason not to pass.
Best tip I can give for AAA is to divide the syllabus properly and look at RISK in every aspect. The focus is no longer about sub procedures or internal control tests like in AA, it’s a lot to do with planning and completion stages and issues identified. Ethics is free/easy marks given, so are substantive procedures if you get the basic ones first.
Also do SBR first or concurrently, DO NOT attempt AAA without SBR as you need knowledge of auditing consol and IFRS areas i.e. pensions and derivatives for example.
1. Biz risk
2. Audit risk (not the same!!)
3. Misc engagements
4. Audit report
5. Audit quality ISQsAudit procedures for points 1,2,3
Look at the marking guidelines ACCA gives specifically for this exam, they give a lot of past candidates answers and how many marks they deserve for a long answer.
Hope this helps and good luck all! With 30%+ pass rates, AAA is not an easy exam but it’s doable if you don’t memorize.
@limlre – I was exempted from the first level – FA, MA and BT because of University
FR, AA, LW – June’21 – worked in Audit at a Big 4 for 3 years so studied for about 4 weeks for these
TX, PM, FM – Dec’21 – tougher than the previous set since never worked in these areas
SBL, AFM – Jun’22
AAA, SBR – Dec’22ACCA Journey complete – officially an Affiliate!!!
All 13 exams done in 18 months passed first time I can’t believe it I’m actually cryingSBR – 70
AAA – 60To those who got the results they wanted, huge congratulations. To those who didn’t, keep trying, the feeling of clearing such a competitive set of exams is like no other.
ACCA Journey complete – officially an Affiliate!!!
All 13 exams done in 18 months passed first time I can’t believe it I’m actually cryingSBR – 70
AAA – 60To those who got the results they wanted, huge congratulations. To those who didn’t, keep trying, the feeling of clearing such a competitive set of exams is like no other.
Last set of exams (AAA and SBR) for me before membership status – cleared all first time but this round was particularly difficult so would be fairly surprised if I pass both.
I’ve just registered for the ACCA in June 2021 and hope to find out that I’m done with it on permanently on Monday haha. Good luck to all!
kris1502 wrote:Warning for anyone using the ACCA Virtual Learning Centre as revision for exam
AFM must’ve been a breeze to study if you didn’t cover the sheer amount of calculations behind futures and options risk management haha. It is the section that makes AFM a *technically* challenging and interesting paper!
muhanned wrote:We can’t be quite on such matter we have to raise this matter to the respected ACCA team, the exam was not nothing or Samillier to the past paper available in ACCA, I know there is always challenge but this one was Literally out of the blue.
I agree it was crazy difficult but it was never supposed to be the same as the mocks, if not then everyone could just memorize and predict the same things in the exam. Please give feedback to ACCA on question clarity but don’t expect them to change on what part of the syllabus they ask
Q1 Q2 and Q3 were all in the syllabus with 1.8mins spent per mark and spreadsheet functionality to be limited to the question. I sat AFM in June this year and passed with 68 1st time and the problems faced were the same as you guys – the case was weird but should sound familiar since it was in the syllabus
Sorry for the spams – just gonna leave this here and see if there are any responses to the series of posts before I forgot everything tomorrow
For the active market one I said there was no active market for the government right sales – the Q had some required reference to IFRS13 Fair value measurement if I recall…
1. Only companies trade the rights and it was not frequent enough as stated in the Q
2. IFRS13 requires it to be an orderly transaction between buyers and sellers
3. Government mandates the price to be sold and not the market participants,
4. Hence FV is difficult to measure through the market approach and I mentioned something about it being an exit price onlyI can’t remember the details of the sale agreement and warranty but yes a warranty is a provision!
Jessica1997w wrote:I was focusing on the usefulness of investors so just benefits of APM rather than drawbacks. I said it’s useful for comparison, decision making preventing risks. I also said apm is voluntary which improves the reputation of the company
I think I tackled this question from the wrong perspective. Would you please let me know?We couldn’t state general facts about what APM was or what benefits could be obtained from it i.e. preventing risks etc or improved reputation I think (esp in SBR)
I had the exact same points as @catherinemulcair for the APM – I discussed that there was a serious issue with it being useful.
The issue was a disclosure uselessness problem with no benefits as to what the co’s underlying PBT was trying to do. Impairment and redundancy costs are operational and reflective of the co.s performance, users analyze an FS to assess the performance of a co. during a recession specifically to make decisions catered to a recession. Adding it back would only show a hypothetical picture of a company without a recession but is completely useless if you think about what that number even means from a decision making and forecasting point of view. The primary elements of usefulness (relevance and faithful rep) were clearly compromised.
I referred to enhancing characteristics – mainly a lack of understandability and verifiability due to it not being regulated under IFRS (essentially what an APM is) and a lack of comparability between other airlines amidst the recession due to subjective judgement entries.
Hope this helps!
Frooti wrote:why did you do 55 *140% as 40,000 were given by gov and 10000 were purchased i guess so shouldn’t it be 5*140%? also for inital 50000 were they considered as government grant?
Q mentioned a penalty of 140% on the price per tonne of the grant and it was 55 on 31 Dec. They had 40,000 initially and purchased 10,000 extra so 50,000 tonnes within their rights limit. They then used 51,000 tonnes by year end hence exceeded by 1,000.
From what I understand 1,000 x 55 x 140% penalty = provision recognized
I also don’t think the emissions right can be grant because it needs to be offset against a PL expense or if it’s an SOFP be written off against carrying value of the asset the grant is for. I can’t identify a specific expense or asset for it to be written off against where it would recognize it as deferred income which couldn’t make sense since there was no receipt of funds or a reduction for the asset/expense. Any thoughts? I wrote it was an intangible because it could direct the activities of the emission in operations and had probable Econ benefits from the rights and cost can measured reliably with no physical presence
No you’re right, sorry I was mistaken on the goodwill calc. ahhhhh careless marks lost
FVNA = 20
80% share x 20 = 16
COI = 16.820% share x 20 = 4
FVNCI = 4.216.8 – 16 = 0.8
4.2 – 4 = 0.2
Goodwill (FV approach) = 0.8 + 0.2
Goodwill (Prop NA approach) = 0.8Such a tricky one but not sure if the rest of you got something along similar lines:
The loan was received on 1 Jan X7 to be repaid on 31 Dec X8 at $10mil.
So I discounted the loan back 2 years @ 0.826 discount rate. Unwind each interest expense every year for 2 years through an amortized cost table and it should end up with the final amount at $11 mil repaid back including interest of 10%.
Which sort makes sense since 10 mil + (10% x 10) = 11 on 31 Dec X8. It’s likely that the loan will be repaid since they signed some agreement to make sure it met the regulation approval thingy.
It was a really difficult paper, even the put option element (which I said was a financial derivative liability) was so out of the ordinary from what we were used to
Ah yes the rights should be an intangible asset
For FV NCI I just did two ways – under prop net asset approach:
FV NCI at acq = 20% (their share) x FVNA of 20 = 4
FV approach:
FV NCI at acq = 4 + NCI goodwill of -0.8 = 3.2
NCI goodwill = 20/80 x CI goodwill… so 20/80 x -3.2 = -0.8
I had the emissions grants one – thought it was quite interesting!
I wrote that it was a provision of 77,000 since they went over by 1,000 tonnes and it was a requirement by gov made in the beginning of the year (past event) with a penalty of breaching the limit (present obligation) and it could be measured reliably at $55 x 140% mark up penalty.
They also wanted to recognize a contingent asset but cant because IAS20 requires proof of government acceptance on the request by the company.
For the Q1 groups consol did anyone get a negative goodwill? I couldn’t figure out how to get goodwill with 2.10 per share x 8 million shares = 16.8mil consideration and FVNA = 20 (with the tax effect?) wasn’t sure what to do with the DTA.
Q4 was crazy – could hardly think of what to write about the APM of underlying PBT but just went ahead with usefulness and broke it down via conceptual framework.
tosino wrote:My paper was:
I had the same variant as you
Was quite surprised that Q2 and Q3 had ethics and professional issues inside, the accounting on the other hand was quite difficult with Q1 being groups consol and Q2 pensions.
Also wasn’t sure if the audit committee question was general theory
Took AFM and SBL together (studied 3 months) and passed both!
SBL – 63
AFM – 68So delighted with this sitting and thankfully have yet to fail any exams so far (fingers crossed). 2 left to go! Congrats to all newly minted Affiliates – well deserved!
Took AFM and SBL together (studied 3 months) and passed both!
SBL – 63
AFM – 68So delighted with this sitting and thankfully have yet to fail any exams so far (fingers crossed). 2 left to go!
It was all TL/ 1 EUR – I can’t seem to remember 100% whether it was paying TL 90,750,000 or receiving. I might have gotten it swapped (DCB) instead of (BCD) haha oh well.
Answers should all have been presented in Euro cuz we’re hedging against the TL$
bongcun wrote:I run out of time so I had only 20 minutes for question 2. Now I’m not sure I got the right informations about exchange rate quoted. Was it TL$/ 1 EUR or EUR/ 1TL$? pls tell me it’s the first one
Yes I got money market as the highest amount too. Was it importer or exporter? (Deposit convert borrow) of (borrow convert deposit)?
shaima wrote:In relation to question 2 risk management Heddging currencyvreceipts
Rates were indirect right?<br>And the Money market hedge provided the highest return right?I combined both equity values when using MVE for combined co WACC. MVD was Cermann’s. Billie’s equity beta = asset beta since debt = 0.
So combined asset beta can be weighted averaged according to the question and then solved for Bg using Bu = Bg x MVE/(MVE+MVD(1-T))
Use Bg in CAPM and solve for ke.
My ke for the combined co came out to be exactly 20.000% on the dot, with kd being (3.5%x1-T). I got 14.2% and rounded it to 14% WACC.
For the cash flow NPV post acquisition, did anyone think “1 year after acquisition” of Billie is actually year 0 for the combined co? It felt like a trick question with the timeline
anwarkhan786 wrote:How did you come to the calculation of combine WACC? the aquiree company has equity beta but no loan, which means that should be considered as their asset beta?
saskel1 wrote:I was running out of time and i put random figures and evaluated them on first question will i get atleast a mark for those random figures
You’ll get marks for the correct evaluation on those figures, not on any of the assumed figures themselves. If your evaluation doesn’t match up correctly then no marks for those too
I’ve done 5 timed mocks and 30-40 practice Qs and this was BY FAR the easiest paper (version) of AFM I’ve encountered (first time sitting).
Q1 – M&A – calculate combined co WACC, value to shareholders, change in % on shares, evaluate share for share exchange, M&A bid defenses strategy and dividend vs capital gain discussion
Q2 – Standard APV and discussion why APV is better than risk adjusted cost of capital approach
Q3 – Derivatives – Forward, futures, Money Market (i can’t believe i dodged I/r hedge let alone options, swaps and horrible collars).
Q3b) Illustrate with examples what a futures margin call would look like with changing closing rates givenA very good paper with luck! Finished just in time. But I can see how different everyone else’s is and would’ve struggled under some of the question topic combos you guys mentioned.
chelseajade05 wrote:Was their mission to provide programmes that inform, educate and entertain or did I totally go off on something else?!
yep, none of the KPIs were aligned to the mission. Though I did argue a retention of staff could imply a retention of skills – which would impact the high quality aspect of the mission, but still concluded none of them did anything. I kept questioning I was on the right track cuz the KPIs were WAY OFF and I wasn’t sure if I missed something too…
Ah ok that makes sense! Yeah the 2marks thing is also another issue not made clear by ACCA, a 12 marker could be 12 points or 6 well developed points. In the debriefs even the tutors themselves have no idea – they all settle for 6-8 points and use the word “hopefully” they get awarded 2 marks per point before concluding with a “at least we can get a “pass” for the section”
It was the struggle of thinking what to write for POPIT that made me think it wasn’t suitable haha – I did it anyways but it’s like the reverse idea of yours 😀 thankfully we’re on the same boat here
The principal part was so strange – I actually thought it was the customers because they’re being forced to pay for the license and it is their money at stake in return for deliverables. The government would then be akin to an agent to ensure YBC keeps their mission objectives while the independent committee ensures VFM while being “friends” with the gov. Thankfully that wasn’t explicitly asked in the exam I think
