*** P4 June 2015 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

I appeared q3. I need to reconcile something to. For equity book value I used 10mn (5mn of the managers and 5 mn of the company providing debt) Is it correct? And for me the debt covenant was met on 1st and 2nd year and it wasnt met on the 3rd and 4th year.

@ammyyy said:
In q3 examiner asked for Mbo vs Mbi and in part b requirement he askd if covenants placed by VC would be breached or not in coming 4 years. can anyone here tell me abt part b of q3 please? was there a breach of covenant in all 4 years or only frst 3 years?

appeared q3. I need to reconcile something to. For equity book value I used 10mn (5mn of the managers and 5 mn of the company providing debt) Is it correct? And for me the debt covenant was met on 1st and 2nd year and it wasnt met on the 3rd and 4th year.

first time it is hard and mor calculation i start by q4 but not finish only futurecontract
56 and interest increase 5.1
then confuse and do q1 b take two hour and write some about asumption and do q3
but not finish i will retake in dec2015

@sssihl said:
Everytime you go to attend this paper with can do approach ,you end up
getting pressurised with large volume of calcuations that end u up in not being
able to calculate even small issues. Really disgusting. This paper examiner should
be changed and replaced with someone who is got common sense to how to set
up questions. Either the questions is so diffcult that you cant think or the question is doable with millions of calculations. Either way he wants you to fail the exam.CHANGE THE EXAMINER AND REPLACE A ONE THAT HAS GOT BRAIN TO SET UP EXAM QUESTIONS.

Totally agree with you. SHISHIR IS CRAZY AND NOT REALISTIC

ACCA has established a new Exam fee futures market, where students, after writing an exam, can bet that the present value of their marks will drop below 5000 basis points by the delivery date ( 1 August)

The standard size of one futures contract is £111, this is equivalent to upfront initial margin required.

The hedge is set up as follows:
1. Buy £ exam fee futures
2. Delivery date: 1 August 2015.
3. No. of contracts: say £333/£111=3

A students sets up the hedge by buying 3 £ exam fee futures at (futures rate will be give)

On due date
*If the student fails, s/he wins the bet, but this will be offset by the initial margin paid upfront.
*But if the student passes, he loses the bet, and this is offset by the refund of initial margin. (futures rate at this date will be determined)

@beaus said:
I appeared q3. I need to reconcile something to. For equity book value I used 10mn (5mn of the managers and 5 mn of the company providing debt) Is it correct? And for me the debt covenant was met on 1st and 2nd year and it wasnt met on the 3rd and 4th year.

I didn’t have enough time to work out the details based on the scenario so I went ahead and made up an Equity Book Value of $1 per share ($26.4 in total). Made sure to note it as an assumption as I was severely behind time.

It’s my first attempt at this paper and I’m wondering why I chose P4!!!

Q1 seemed to be a standard project NPV including foreign currency. Funnily enough I think this was easier than the optional questions, which is surprising because in the build up to the exam I found I did better on the 25 mark questions. However it was very time consuming. In Part A I spoke about if they had there own assembly plant they would have better control, acquire high calibre employees because the scenario said people from Yilandwe where ambitious and well educated.

Q2 was about dark pools and deciding whether a company should or should not dispose of there shares. I found the written part of explaining what dark pools were ok but didn’t really know how to answer the area of should they dispose of there shares. I valued the company using the P/E Ratio model and asset basis but didn’t get much time to talk about the results, while also working our the EPS and Share price and comparing to the industry averages which were supplied. Basically said how every calculation was below industry standard and they should divest.

Q4 was about interest rate futures, options and collars.I found the calculations ok but part b was a written element about discussing margin payments and futures prices changing daily which I had no idea about and ran out of time so didn’t really write anything. Seriously WTF did anyone write about the futures changing daily?? I thought those prices were valid for the whole month!!

Overall I don’t think the exam was a BEAST and I’m already fearing i’ll have to do it again.

I messed it up this time. I spent exactly 2 hours doing Q1 and after that noticing I had only 1 hour to complete 2 questions–i freaked out completely. I left marks, made mistakes in the later part.. I came out of the exam hall crying. It had such a bad impact on me. I knew the answers but couldnt write anything.

In q1 there was this average inflation rate and it was totally screwed up! I just added the inflation rates for 4 years and then divided by 4 to get the average inflation rate. I have no idea if this was right or wrong..anyone did it correctly?

I dont understand why the examiner is testing the basics by giving us silly and lengthy calculations? we already know hot to inflate figures there is no reason of testing us on whether we know multiplication and division of bigger numbers or not!

@beaus said:
I messed it up this time. I spent exactly 2 hours doing Q1 and after that noticing I had only 1 hour to complete 2 questions–i freaked out completely. I left marks, made mistakes in the later part.. I came out of the exam hall crying. It had such a bad impact on me. I knew the answers but couldnt write anything.

In q1 there was this average inflation rate and it was totally screwed up! I just added the inflation rates for 4 years and then divided by 4 to get the average inflation rate. I have no idea if this was right or wrong..anyone did it correctly?

I dont understand why the examiner is testing the basics by giving us silly and lengthy calculations? we already know hot to inflate figures there is no reason of testing us on whether we know multiplication and division of bigger numbers or not!

I feel your pain. My eyes watered at the end.

For the option questions (3 &4) I had insufficient time to understand the scenario and apply it to the requirements. At one point I was just seeing numbers and letters and it was like reading Russian. I did rough calculations (using estimated figures) so I could at least write a discussion.

I feel gutted.

Well after reading about your pains guys I though I’d share mine as my bones hurt from the stress of today’s experience having to sit p4. And I am not joking.

Got to the exam hall with the great feeling of I am going to collect the 50 marks and this was my objective, stick to the mark collection.

Quick read in the first 15 min to see if any favourite topics. Luckily MBOs was there. So I started with Q4. Managed to complete it by 11.30.

They are right saying if you don’t start with A question at the beginning it seems a bit overwhelming in the middle of the exam, having not even read the scenario.

So I quickly made up my mind and attempted Q4 next. By 12.15 I finished the 1st part of calculating the benefit of having interest rate instruments. And left it there as I was running out of time for the very famous Q1. I liked calculating NPVs until today. Never had so many variables, 3 currencies. So by the time that I skim read the scenario it was already 12.30 and didn’t know where to start from. Panicked also as didn’t know in which currency to calculate the cash flows. Then I saw the savers of assumptions and other reasons before choosing the plant investment. So I quickly jumped into writing a report assuming positive NPV in the last 20 minutes. And this was it, I have not even contemplated the cash flows…

Why would you make us using valuable time of applying inflation and currency conversion for every single line of the c.f.? I lost the big picture of the forest from the lots of trees. This q needs good 2 hours of workings at least and this is after a careful reading which would have taken me 30 min.

How many contracts did you guys get for the interest rate hedge? Q.4

I ended up with a negative npv for question one, but show all working so should still pick up marks, used the neg answer in report and based conclusion on this,

Answered q2 first and was ok,

Q4 had a mental block and forgot what to do, left it to late to attempt question 3 instead,
Not likely to get 50 out of 75 marks,
Anyone else planning retake for sept?