*** P4 December 2014 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

@humzaacca said:
hi i think that $7.5 was to multiply by no. of shares to get market value of A co and then divide the market value by 7.2 to get FCFE multiplied by growth rate and divide by Ke to get the Ve for A Co.

I think Felix is right, it’s like bootstrapping.

Use Gordon growth to calculate g, which u use along with ke n FCFE to get MVe of Fugue alone.

Use the multiple to calculate the market value of the combined company.

@muneebnawaz90 said:
Cant we be unethical for a while to say few words for this p4 examiner?

Such scattered info in q1 and asked for every single thing in question 1 from blackscholes to wacc and valuation to benefits.

really was there blackscholes in question 1? which part? i did not notice?

There was an option to sell the luxury-project end of year two for $50m. Option to abandon. However, I could not find std dev. to use.

Absolutely agree, I cannot believe that I have been studying so much and covered so many topics and then didn’t know where to start from (Q1)

At one moment, I kept on shooting the examiner 1000 times in my head looking at the requirements of Qn 1. That was a devastating and horrendous question! I attempted Qn. 3 and 4. and they were that bad (Qn. 4 being a pretty cool question), but those 2 aren’t enough to pass the exams. :/

I want to believe that the examiner seems to be happy if they are saying that is paper is tough. I beg, ACCA should bring back the former examiner. That one has human feelings that this new one. Since he assumed the post, his questions especially question one are no go area.

If truly they are training us what we will be doing in practice, I do not think that we will be facing this kind of problem where information will be made complex as this apart from the fact that we will not be under time constraint like this to solve practical issues in real life. Wicked Examiner! He must have failed many times before he qualified. So, he want to make us to suffer the same faith. Your days are numbered

100% agreed. Sitting P4 felt like attempting a job screening test with a limited amount of time trying to meet the highest expectations.
Tactic was crucial for today’s exam. I started with Q 2 without even looking at Q 1. Then tried to attempt as much as possible in Pt c of Q 1 keeping in mind that there were 4 valuable marks for report format. And then attempted the rest of the question. I managed to write solutions to all the parts of all 3 questions including Q 3. Really hope for a favorable result.

I felt like I was fighting a world war! My head went completely blank after reading Q1, I can still feel that headache. Now I feel like it was a waste taking time off from work to do all this studying. Worked hard and it doesn’t seem to be paying off…sometimes it easier to be a bum! I feel like giving up but I know its not in me to give up.

@angelkay said:
I felt like I was fighting a world war! My head went completely blank after reading Q1, I can still feel that headache. Now I feel like it was a waste taking time off from work to do all this studying. Worked hard and it doesn’t seem to be paying off…sometimes it easier to be a bum! I feel like giving up but I know its not in me to give up.

Yes i felt the same. And the annoying thing is – i genuinely feel like i understand most of the syllabus quite well (revision/mock/past papers completed relatively well) which is why its demoralising hitting a q1 that had enough variables and different calculations… But then theyre not even very clear nor follow the pattern of info we are used to recieving eg not providing the standard deviation. I went home and looked at the work ive done… I couldve done more past papers and still would be nowhere near a pass

@gabrielacomann said:
I am taking P5 too, now…. Hope to be better than q4. The MV for debt was indeed 102.4 something

I pasaed p5 in the last sitting and it is a godsend compared to this. It was a strangely nice paper to sit – it was tough and tested you hard, but it is very fair

They publish an article in Technical Article section and expect us to be ready with that only piece of information as an example, am sure both bpp,kaplan, and any other text do not have a examples of expected values method of decision tree to derive an NPV, it was too much to understand in limited amount of time and also increasing level of complications, I don’t think this is a strategy for ACCA to generate revenue, Its really hard earned money + hard work + not socializing with family and friends to pass this paper and all in vain. Imagine ACCA conducting 4 sessions in a year and with this difficulty level…! Can some one pass our messages to ACCA.

I decided to do section B questions first and managed to get 3&4 done to what I hope is a satisfactory standard. I didn’t have time for, I think, 3c relating to legal risks so i skipped it and moved on to question 1 with 90mins left.

Question 1 – wowza what a nightmare. The question was closely related to one of acca’s technical articles –> https://www.accaglobal.com/uk/en/student/acca-qual-student-journey/qual-resource/acca-qualification/p4/technical-articles/conditional-probability.html

I didn’t manage to finish the assessment of the project with the offer to sell the project after year 1 however I’m pretty sure that this was not a real option question. A lot of people will disagree with me on this but if you read the article linked to above it shows how to assess an offer to sell using probability adjusted cash flows (you look at the probability adjusted present value of cash flows after year 1 and then compare this value to selling the project – the article explains this much better than me). There was no standard deviation in the question so there was no way to calculate the value of a real option.

As I said though I didn’t do any better as I didn’t finish the last 2 parts of Q1 (which will also have cost me at least 3/4 professional marks and caused me to fail I’m fairly certain). My issue is not the difficulty of the question, it’s the time constraint. I really struggle to see why ACCA papers, particularly at the professional level, are so time pressured?! Surely examining someone’s ability to sit and think through a problem is more valuable than assessing how quickly than can get a semi-sensible scatter of relevant numbers down. Giving more time would improve the quality of answers, ensuring that candidates are assessed on what they know rather than how quick they can work. Surely it’s better for an individidual to work a little slower but work in a neat methodical manner providing sensible logical and useful advice for the given scenario. No doubt a reduction in time pressure would also make the markers job easier as well because answers could be presented better.

Even before this I was considering writing to acca to get an understanding of why we are given a tight time constraint, I don’t see much value in it. If candidates have the knowledge but it takes them longer to get it down then I think they deserve to pass, there should not be a punishment for being a slow writer or for being having a bit more thinking time. In the real world it is a much bigger error to steam in to your work and make mistakes than to stop and take a few minutes to really consider what you need to do and how best to present it. This reality should be reflected in the ACCA exams.

Super frustrating to know more than you have time to write.

I’d like to know what others think on this.

AJ

I wonder how much practice I must put in to finish all three questions in P4. Prior to this exam I had not failed a paper in my entire student life more than once. Today was third attempt on P4. Question 1 was very complex. Most likely I will have to retake. Hopefully more practice is what is required