AFMJune 2021 ACCA AFM exam was - Instant Poll and comments

Exam was Between Easy and Hard ( For me Average) Q1) APV Tested on International Investment Appraisal and Related Scenario Discussion Q2) Business Valuation (1 Parent - two targets) FCFE Valuation Methods, Question was fairly easy Q3) Straight Forward Currency Risk Question with Hedging Choices, Currency Forward, Currency Future, Currency Options and related Discussion like benefits of OTC Currency Options and Exchanged Trade Options. But immense time pressured exam, Sometimes What you know becomes 50% in Exam Conditions and only Good Practice will bring the remaining 50% back and one can score above 70 marks. I did very little practice but could still attempt 78% of the paper with Quality, Minimum 50-60 expected. But Fingers Crossed!!

The exam was considered not too hard but due to the time pressure, i don't have enough time to think thoroughly and mostly only able to write and calculate what i know.

Too timed pressured, im just hoping a pass.

I was meant to take the AFM exam at 2:30pm IST today. Despite trying to launch the exam at 2:00pm, I have had no luck. I was being put in que (over 350+ position) for my exam to launch. And once it was my turn, I would get a message saying there was a connection issue and would put me back again in the queue. After trying for nearly 2 hours, I finally had a pop-up message from the invigilator saying there was an issue with the webcam and that I must re-launch the OnVue app. I spoke to the tech support team as well (4 times on and that too on an international call). The team said, "there is a "technically issue" in India as they have lots of students trying to login and there is also congestion due to heavy rains. I should keep trying until the exam ends. And if the problem persists, I have no option but to withdraw from the exam and re-schedule for the next session, which would be 3 months later". Accordingly I kept trying to launch the exam for the entire 3:20 window but unfortunately had no luck. I did connect with numerous other students from India who had the same issue. My point being, ACCA has been hosting remote sessions for nearly a year now. It is so not right to say that there are technical issues due to heavy traffic. I mean, considering ACCA is such an esteemed and professional body, I would have expected them to have a certain level of planning and contingency plans. You already knew the number of students planning to take the exams, you accordingly should have upgraded your systems and the network! Simply stating that the student must reschedule an exam for the next session which will be conducted 3 months later is just not right. As such exams are quite challenging, having to go through sleepless nights and preparing all over is nothing less than mentally exhausting and much severe pain. I simply am not ready to go through the cycle all over and reschedule to the next session. And even if I agree to re-schedule, what guarantee do I have that such "technical issues" will not be repeated. I mean, at the very least you can allow candidates to re-book the exam within a day's time or a week. Preparing all over is no joke and I certainly am not up for it. It is such a shame that I am unable to re-book the exam now. I also fear that if I have to re-book the exam 3 months later, the issue may persist and again I may end up with the same issue. Also it goes without saying that it greatly impacts my career planning. I just wish you could have allowed students to re-book an exam within a day or week in case of such issues, instead of putting in pain to prepare all over. This is such a setback and a major disappointment. I always took pride in being an ACCA student but unfortunately this incident has truly exhausted and mentally traumatized me.

Does anyone remember the breakdown of marks for question 1 Sundo?

My questions were: Q1. NPV foreign subsidiary 20 marks APV 6 marks Assumptions 7 marks Discussions regarding corporate citizen, environmental reporting 8 marks Advantages/ disadvantages of joint venture compare to subsidiary set up Q2 Hedging: forwards, options, futures 15 marks something about OTC options or futures Q3 Discussion of suitability of 2 targets 6 marks Target aqc split into 3 questions10 marks Defensive strategies discussion 5 marks

Does anyone know the marking breakdown for every part of exam - I’m trying to self Mark to see what realistic result is...

It was really worse . Shame on Acca Portal . My story is also same . MY screen got freeze after 10 mins of exam start .

Saddest Day of my life, AFM exam launched and I was thrilled after seeing questions but due to technical issues my screen got freezed and I contacted invigilator,he asked me to cancel everything and he will relaunch the exam but he disappered I tried my level best to relaunch no one contacted me i raised so many queries i lost my mind my heart sank as i was so much prepared for exam invested efforts, time,emotions but this technical issue ruined everything. refunding money is not a solution , Money can't buy time . who will be responsible for this unproffesional behavior?? #ACCA do not play with career!!!!!!

When i opened the paper, i was happy but the time issue got me worried i left a 25 mark question and did not write the report due to time constraints. Now am already looking for money for a resit.

Sat the AFM today. Had the paper with APV in Q1, acquisition in q2 and currency hedging in Q3. Couldn't get to all parts. There wasn't enough time. Q1 was mired with time traps. They really have to sort out the time issues associated with the papers. I left about 10 to 15 marks unattempted due to time constraints. That's not ideal when a student knows the content but hasn't the time to express that suitably. I know ACCA intend to replicate real world environment with CBE spreadsheets and wordpad etc but the time pressure is unrealistic and leads to poor presentation and rushed information and that isn't a fair reflection for a lot of the effort students put in.

I had q1 APV and foreign investment appraisal, q2 business valuation/acquisition and q3 foreign currency hedging. I also found that I did not have enough time. There was so much to do in q1 that it left me short on time for q2 and q3. I just didn’t have enough time to think about all the info in q2 so attempted the theory parts, but missed the actual valuation part. I moved onto the hedging question that I just about finished, but then had no time to go back to the valuation question. I feel disappointed that I couldn’t attempt all parts. I find that there is so much info to digest in the scenarios that there’s not enough time to get everything done.

It is just simply sad. I too had to withdraw. All the sleepless night & efforts are in vain. Have to go through it all over…

Easy exam, least challenging compared to all the past papers and could be done well with in time for once which is unheard of this exam, perhaps the examiner is finally mindful of our feedback. but i didnt do justice to myself with question spotting, skipped foreign appraisal and currency hedge based on past paper trend and they both came. Given the fact its cbe format now , multiple papers are published, instead of one universal exam, so anyone reading this, do cover all the syllabus and disregard question spotting based on past exams. No easy pure knowledge based marks, every discussion element was tied with scenario. Company made cold storage units only now i am thinking due to cluro fluro carbon that we read in science impacts negatively to the environment and the question asked about environmental impact that the company is engaging in, perhaps due to exam pressure i just couldnt make sense to it and went all out on land restoration that the company would fix at the end of project. so its a science based exam too lately, sigh ! To be fair there was no reason for currency hedge to come as examiner has always equally weighed in interest and currency on a particular 4 exam sitting stint, This surprised me the most. Really feel sorry for those whose exam got aborted, i can totally relate the titanic effort this exam requires to be fit for an exam and to do it all again to keep knowledge fresh is nothing short of a nightmare, none of the prior acca exam required so much effort that i placed on this one

sarahcopeland wrote:I had q1 APV and foreign investment appraisal, q2 business valuation/acquisition and q3 foreign currency hedging. I also found that I did not have enough time. There was so much to do in q1 that it left me short on time for q2 and q3. I just didn’t have enough time to think about all the info in q2 so attempted the theory parts, but missed the actual valuation part. I moved onto the hedging question that I just about finished, but then had no time to go back to the valuation question.

i had the same exam as yours, did you get loss in year 1 and year 4 for foreign investment? sorry to hear you couldnt finish the entire exam, i know this was an easy exam and u would be feeling missed out not to capitalise on it. However i found question 1 very easy flowing, mirroring the style of presentation of past paper, hence even all that exhausative information relating to each cash flow was there but it was so typical that it automatcally guides you into answering and i didnt feel like i was reading a lot but merely going through it, To be fair i did ton of NPV practice and was done with entire calculation in 30 mins. that too much practice also costed me as i screwed up easy 6 marks on APV, i had done an apv question with a one year tax delay that had a loss in first year, so when i saw loss in year 1 of our exam, it pushed me into solving apv with a one year tax delay, not realising that there that tax is paid in the same year

Hi Nataly, did you get loss in year 1 and 4 on foreign operations ? edit: qoute didnt work

All I can say is, I could have passed this paper if it wasn't for the time pressure. My exam shut down just when I was rushing to write the theory parts after skipping the numerical on the last question as I had only 15 minutes left and I knew I wouldn't be able to do numbers with that time stress. Does anyone remember the spot rate in the NPV question? I remember inflation in USA was 3% and Arsania was 8%. I feel like I would have messed it up but I remember my calculated rates for following years.

Hey thanks a lot. I believe that's correct. So we did 77.5 x (1.08/1.03) for year 1 rate

Hi afmp4 - I got a loss in yr 1 but don’t think I did in yr 4 (but can’t totally remember).

Hi. I don't know exactly if ACCA want us to become super accountants but to be honest they should seriously readjust the timing for the optional papers to 4hrs instead of 3hrs:15 mins given the amount of info to assimilate. For my part that's my second attempt. The paper was fairly doable but again I ran out of time to the extent that I couldn't properly write the report. Overall I attempted 70% and couldn't do moist of the written parts in Q1. Now that paper based is over there will be even greater challenges with the unreliability of the CBE platform.

A few wobblers thrown in to Asrania question to slow things down. The initial investment in l&b and p&m was split over two periods. 60pc time 0 and balance prior to yr2. It mentioned that some materials were provided through USD by our parent company and that there was a contribution of 30$ on "some" of these. Didn't quite understand that myself. Tax was delayed a year ( I think) and there was a tax treaty between the two countries. 20pc in Asrania and 35pc in US. Anyway the while thing started to get out of control toward the latter parts of the appraisal and as I said, unrealistic with no time to consider the work that you were putting together.

Theory in the paper: Treasury' s role in handling economic risk. Benefits and drawbacks of operating as a joint venture instead of opening a sub. Assumptions of Npv. Environmental impact on conducting foreign operations. Strategic importance of merger. Counter bid to avoid a takeover. Benefits and drawbacks of OTC compared with futures

sarahcopeland wrote:Hi afmp4 – I got a loss in yr 1 but don’t think I did in yr 4 (but can’t totally remember).

Hmm ok thanks for the reply. Was tax being paid a year later

kayzah wrote:Hi

Yeah I remember doing a silly mistake. The minimum offer that target was asking was based on listed price but we had to do our calculations based on cashflow value of target.

Did anybody have a FX question with an AR of either 270 or 240 US Dollars. Do you remember what the rate was? 0,23 Dollars to Malaysian currency or vice versa? I had not much time left, and divided the AR by the FX rate... Cant get the one out of my head. I mean its a disaster to make a mistake on such a straightforward question... Thank you.

Hey. It was 1 MR = 0.23 USD. So division was correct.

afmp4 wrote:Hi Nataly, did you get loss in year 1 and 4 on foreign operations ? edit: qoute didnt work

I didn't get a loss as I messed up with component cost. However, I was expecting loss due to wording losses can be carried forward

palv wrote:Does anyone remember the spot rates provided for Q3 hedging question? Was it 1 MR -0.8xxx Dollars or 1dollar for 0.8xx MR? Seems I made mistake in ex rate application, but do not remember exactly the question((

it was 0.8xx $ per MR. I had around 96M MR for hedging options

To Nataly Component price was given, simply had to convert to foreign currency. Yes the wording assured me there would be a loss and there was. I skipped the foreign appraisal thought it wouldn't come, so had no clue what to do dealing with cash back to US. Learned 5 marks are for that . Dealing with component price back at US is the only tough thing in the question. Do u recall was the tax being paid same year or later? Anyways I've been restless on this. No point in recalling. Can't change a thing now.

Was the net receipt the same for forwards and futures in the second question (set with Sundo Co)? Also, was there a percentage decrease for the acquirer under share-for-share exchange in the third question?