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Not sure why they time it like this as it can only cause anxiety – surely no one can have a clear memory of what they did in the exam. I think I will avoid looking for this reason.
Surely if they released the answers after the results you would only go and study them if you needed to retake…Hi folks,
I submitted section 9 last night.
Today my section 9 says “passed” but myacca is still showing I need to complete the ethics module.
Hoping it will resolve itself quickly because I wanted to get this out of the way so that if I have passed my final exams I can proceed to membership.
I haven’t seen anything to suggest it is awaiting audit but I will keep checking every day.
Does anyone else have experience of this?louibee1024 – I can remember some bits although I did Q 4 first
In (a) I talked about how there should’ve been some financial measures in the score if it was supposed to measure value for money. Also that presenting rankings as a score and not the data itself diluted its usefulness (i.e. the forces couldn’t see how much room for improvement). Then I talked about the individual measures relating them to the detailed goals and how the data could be useful/could be improved (can’t remember much of that bit though!)
In (b) I talked about general advantages and criticisms briefly. Said employees might be tempted to act in certain ways to make sure they were on target e.g. not formally reporting crimes that were reported on the beat, call handlers under pressure to get through calls might not make the right decisions etc!! Re the school bit I was really rushing by then but said that public didn’t have a choice about which police force to call whereas school league tables geared to parental choice and also that schools likely to be funded per child so probably why there wasn’t a financial measure in the mix referring to my earlier point. Didn’t get time for a conclusion! Thought I might come back to it but that was wishful thinking!Did the last part of Q1 give you increased fixed costs? I did not see them! Both mine came out above the target so I obviously missed something!!
Q1 was ok I thought – caculations pretty straightforward and the discussion parts were structured so hopefully kept on track.
What did people do for the last part? I calculated the profits based on contribution from earlier part (i) then thought there was obviously more to it than that! Talked about assumptions being flawed in competitive environment and did sensitivity analysis on sales price for the cheap washing machine for Plan A then ran out of time.
I spent an hour on Q4 – oops! Seemed ok if I was on the right lines.
Rushed Q3 but hopefully I will have scored some marks. Think my part (a) was more like what differences the new system would make to operationally efficiency than how the performance management would change with hindsight.My strategy was to start with section B – chose questions and planned them in the reading time, then allowed 85 mins for writing them, 5 mins for reading Q1 and 90 mins to attempt it. This meant I couldn’t spend 2 hours on Q1 as others have mentioned (I had I bad experience of this in a different exam which I only just scraped through!)
Q3 – okay on the whole I think
Bit confused by the 30% vs 50% premium bit. They gave up 2 low-value shares, got a cash premium and then acquired a share in the new company that was worth loads more (something over $7 equity value from part a divided by 310 shares??) – the 50% premium seemed unnecessarily generous. Clearly I missed something there!!Q4 – okay on the whole too
By my calculations it was better to sell as a going concern and the demerger wasn’t as good an option financially.
I had the Islamic finance articles fresh in my mind and there were clues in the question pointing to a venture capital type of arrangement. Also mentioned loss sharing aspect.Q1 – obviously I didn’t finish although was quite pleased there was only a page of scenario to read compared to some of the mocks I have done. Also glad of easy working capital and straight line depreciation.
Got down a few bits about role of WTO – I don’t remember the question asking for advantages and disadvantages though??
Worked methodically through the NPV and should have done ok although who knows what mistakes I was oblivious to in my haste!
Decided to focus on part d as it was more marks than part c so I left space in my ‘report’ to come back and moved onto assumptions etc. Then got as far as writing down equations for Black Scholes and starting to put values next to r, s, t etc. (not sure that will get me even a mark!!) and hastily wrote in the report that I hadn’t had time to value the option but assumed it would increase the NPV making it more worthwhile!!Wish I had found this in June instead of stumbling across it now!
Might be of use to candidates for December sitting – BPP has published a supplement for the P3 Practice & Revision Kit which corrects the erroneous question plan. You can download it here: https://www.bpp.com/about-bpp/aboutBPP/StudentInfoI really let myself down!
Whilst reasonably confident with most of what I did for Q1, I spent far too long over it, the rest was a gallop and I didn’t finish.
I think I may have got in a pickle in the impairment calculation. I grossed up the goodwill but I forgot the fair value adjustment and only impaired the PPE by the 60% proportion…
I did Q2 in a rush (with limited success I expect). I certainly don’t expect to get the professional marks!
I came onto Q3 with very little time left and the leases seemed baffling to get my head around quickly so I did part (c) which was only worth 6 marks…
I will be very lucky to pass with 19 marks left out and Q2 so rushed. Very disappointed in myself as I have all first time passes up to now.I really hope the marking scheme for Q1 (a) (i) isn’t weighted so that you had to distribute the project management criticisms evenly between the 3 phases of the project that they identified… I did make sure that I put a couple of things for each but way more for initiation phase as it was so clearly doomed from the start LOL!
Why am I even thinking about this? Must get to bed now. P2 in the morning!Timing was a big issue today. I had not finished reading Q1 at the 15 minutes mark, let alone the options (chosen by reference to the question requirements not reading the scenarios).
Q.1. I began after an extra 10 mins to finish reading(!) and took too long. Part (a) seemed ok – structured (i) around the project stages and (ii) around cultural web (except no obvious symbols, more emphasis on power) and comparing config of org to what the CEO was used to. Did you decide it was a professional bureaucracy anyone??
Part (b) I had already overrun and with hindsight should’ve moved on to do a better job of the Section B questions but I had a quick stab, writing down ways in which the CEO intended strategy to come from design, experience and ideas but all were scuppered as he didn’t go about it very well. Did anyone feel they knew what this part was after?
Q.2. I got something down for each of the 5 forces in part (a) and talked through modelling scenarios on range of assumptions for part (b) but I didn’t even look at the financial information I now realise!! Did people conclude that it was a good strategy?
Q.3. I began with something like 20 mins of exam time left but I think my part (a) answer was strong. I positioned each of the strategies on the quadrant and explained the IT people should’ve focused their attentions on the web process not overcomplicating payroll to the extent people don’t know what they’re being rewarded for! I said to stick with outsourced legal as workload varies and not adding value. Part (b) I frantically scribbled a few things about CRM, then realised that the customers were industry-based not end users so usual incitements wouldn’t sway them. Was in middle of trying to turn it around when time was up!
Overall not a disaster but could’ve done with more reading/thinking time. Hoping for a pass!Definitely not just you – I tried to use this as a revision plan i.e. reading the suggested passcard chapters before attempting each block of questions but I found the questions usually related to a topic I hadn’t revised yet!
It seemed to be particularly bad in this P3 kit but I have had this problem before with other papers.
Hope your revision has gone well 🙂Here’s one for the criteria for choosing a segment as a target market:
S = Stable
P = Potentially profitable
A = Accessible (profitably)
S = Susceptible (to the marketing mix)
M = MeasurableACCA has posted on facebook today:
ACCA can confirm December 2012 exam results were accessible for a limited number of ACCA students for a short period of time. We apologise for this, and for any inconvenience caused. We are looking into why this happened. December 2012 exam results will be available on 8 February 2013.Mine still showed my June 2012 results in section A but in section B it has updated status to pass and shows marks for exams in the Dec 2012 sitting. I hope it’s accurate!
If you are using the examiner’s published answers on the ACCA website they are not updated. I’m sure I read a disclaimer…
@nevyana said:
I am not sure of what you are saying, f9 pass rate has never exceeded 42% and the latest one was 37%, look what Cardine is saying, she’s been attempting it since 2004.I didnt mean it was easy or impossible to fail, just that focusing on the things you did wrong doesn’t give you a realistic impression of your likely score. If you look at the marking scheme at the end of the June 2012 answers https://www.accaglobal.com/content/dam/acca/global/PDF-students/acca/f9/exampapers/F9_2012_jun_a.pdf you will see that there are lots of things that you may have done that can earn you a mark. If you have gone through all the steps of the NPV calculation, you still get credit for calculating PVs and adding them up even if you used the wrong discount rate and you still get credit for commenting on financial acceptability as long as you comment on the NPV you calculated (even if that was wrong).
My comment about maximum marks seems to apply more to theoretical question parts though now I look at it again!
As we don’t have yesterday’s mark scheme we can only really be certain of losing 8 marks if we missed out a part question worth 8 marks. Cardine also mentioned that time management was a big issue and it is very difficult for us detail-oriented people to move on when we have a problem to solve!
Hope we all made it through this time 🙂 I’m off to revise P1 now.@vipin70 said:
q.no1.
those who got NPV around 255k, and ARR 28% , you r going to loss 8 marks.
dont worry, i also going to lose same marks.We’ll all find out in due course but don’t be disheartened. ACCA exams are marked positively so that everything step you do correctly or valid comments you make are given marks and marks are given for later parts of a question if an earlier error follows through.
Remember when you do example questions often there are more marks available than the mark scheme so even if you make 3 separate mistakes you won’t necessarily lose 3 marks.
It certainly felt like there were more than 100 marks at stake today;)There was certainly a lot to do!! I think in terms of difficulty it was not as challenging as some of the mock/past papers I looked at. Certainly after 15 minutes (which felt like 5!) of reading time I was confident I could have a good stab.
Was really disciplined about moving on after 45 mins per question and think I did enough to pass each one. Some small gaps I meant to go back and expand on and never got the chance but nothing left completely unanswered.
I’m surprised you guys remembered the answers to your calculations so clearly. I did find the NPV and volume discount acceptable and got net cost on the receivables question which seems to agree with the majority of you.
When there is so much information to read (I’m thinking Q4) it’s very tempting to jump in and start answering, thinking you’ll pull the relevant facts out but then you discover the net assets were supposed to be adjusted for NRV…
