*** P5 June 2011 Exam was … Post your comments here and vote in Instant Poll ***

@shawn99michaels said:
Didn’t they give the cost of capital at 9% ? there was no market information to work out the cost of equity was there or am i losing the plot here ?

i assumed there was no equity, ie. it was just 100% debt ??

Nasty examiner. We do not got to the exam hall for writing thesis, do we? I studied a lot and solved lots of past question but didn’t help.

Did questn 1 last and didn’t remember to put in the detail in a report format? Would probably lose up to 5 marks for not doing that. Am I not fucked?

So with the EVA calc I did all the NOPAT stuff and put my assumptions in about depn, leasing, interest?? etc and then put in my calc but just put that I couldnt calculate the wacc as cost of equity not given. Do you reckon I will get any marks for that or do you think he will just think I am dumb? I hear all you guys when you say this is like P3 I mean no NPV, IRR, MIRR (which was tipped as new), Ratio Analysis or budgeting or probabilities which again was tipped.
The examiner really needs to learn how to write questions in speak we can all understand. I believe he is a maths professor?? Would love to think I have done enough to pass but then I know I havent 🙁 Did answer everything but even I thought when I was writing – wtf are you going on about!!! ha

q1 a) asked to evaluate performance of the division and CRITICALLY ASSES the proposed performance measures ?The examiner didnt ask to compare divisional performance using new measures (EVA, RI) . So i compared divisional performance with old measures ie ROI and then went on explaining EVA, RI with pros and cons rather than calculating them due to insufficient info for EVA calc.(no wacc,economic depreciation , non capitalised expenses.and other adjustments to profit)

Attempted q1 last as it looked like a bit too much hassle. The other questions were easy enough but you’d want to be a machine to answer them within the given time limit. Another borderline ACCA exam. Hope yis all pass!

This was a deceptively hard exam. The questions looked easy until you started to do them, then they turned out to be a nightmare. For the time allocated to each question, it was impossible to provide a proper answer and analysis. There wasn’t time to absorb what the scenarios were about, you just had to write, write, write and hope you wrote something decent. It was totally unrealistic for a 3 hour paper.

this exam was weird, its like you knw all the topics but to use knowledge there was no thinking time! i spend most of the exam panicking about time … but reasonably challenging ………

It is not too bad at last. However, pass is the other side of life. Hope to receive a good result on Aug 11 and to be affiliate then. Wish you all the best!

@dou said:
hey guys,

can i know the meaning of critically assess in your mind?
For my understanding through the website, i knew that critically assess is weigh arguments for and against something, assessing all evidence. Decide which opinions, theories, models or items are preferable. So, measurement will be needed??hmm…

and the notional interest of capital, in the question 1, i get from bpp text book that it was WACC, so i think many of us is getting wrong, even by using the assumption, except the examiner ‘planned’ to give more people pass, thus they will give more sympathetic marks. (pray to the GOD!lol)

Any ideas for question 2 about the evaluate the performance measure? I just felt examiner is testing us about the understanding on the using of BSC. Thus the measurement method make me feel little bit weird. Will you use share price to evaluate your company financial perspectives? i think NOT,because it was depends on the markets and you are not controllable on it. So if you show it, it was not related to your company performance for the year, right?(As profit margin or ROCE is more likely that you can control on it.)
*Share price changes is based on supply and demand and only can say the company had attracted new investors.

Q3,building block. A) part is bonus, it just want us show out the detail of building block, it was purely like fundamental level style. So, they was testing do you study the models before coming to the exam.

And q4 is rush for me,because i put too many times on the transfer pricing to understand what they are talking about. it was really messy question if compare to the questions i did before.

Anyway, i just hope for a pass, no need flying colour! REALLY, pray hard for everyone. Then most of us can graduate and throw the books away permanently.

MASTER!! I hope i can come it in this year!

greetings

honestly were we really suppose to calc. EVA and RI after explaining their pros and cons. I think it was a trap to lure everyone in calc.them. This examiner hates numbers, hes got alaphabetphobia i guess.

q2 regarding bsc assessment , s/price and eps do not provide l/term s/holder value as this was the aim of company, I suggested NPV ,EVA ..ROCE and operating profit are s/term measures dont link eid s/hlder value..

close to a year now but not even a single article from this examiner.yet he uses prev examiners’ articles as source of his questions! am i missing something here? if not, someone must be lazy and unresourceful!!

Q#1- Tricky and took lot of time
Q#2- Balanced scorecard Lengthy but OK
Q#3- Building Blocks model again time pressure as Q 1 and 2 consume all
Q#4- BCG Matrix Totally missed out (time out for me)
I was very well prepared for this exam but after looking question 1 and 2 it was nightmare for me as every question has 4 parts very lengthy. Last paper for me but surely not gonna be qualified in this attempt i think this paper also requires similar approach as p3.

@jenniedawnwilson1 said:
Hi All

Without going into too much detail, famous last words, my main sticking points were.

Q1- a)straight away i spotted the overhead allocation and couldnt decide whether the figures for the calcs should include them, or act as if they werent there?? i ended up doing two sets of calcs, one lot including them, one lot without. i knew this wasnt ideal, but i thought if i made a call either way it would be wrong!
Also wasnt the whole point in the WACC that there was no share capital, it was just debt, so the wacc was just the the debt (100%x whateva the cost of debt was)?

Q1-b) how annoying, i was actually hoping trf pricing would come up, but the way he worded the question was so weird i didnt actually understand what was going on in the scenario (i wrote this on my exam paper).

Q2 & 3- were fine in a sense, but felt 20 marks for basically just talking about a model related to the scenario was too heavily weighted. felt like i was kind of repeating myself a lot.

Q5- i only picked this because when i saw the BCG i panicked, i hadnt looked at this since studying p3! Again annoyingly, I had studied Environmental Management Accounting, it was tipped by the tutor, but it was only when got to this question (in the last 20 mins of the exam) i realised they were talking about 3 different types?? I knew what it was, the advantages, why people would use it, the costs etc. but didnt even know there were 3 types. When i got home and looked in the text book, there were indeed 3 types! Messed that one up then!

Overall I think although ok from the outset, there were a lot of marks on very few areas, obscure areas of the syllabus were tested (apart from q1), and he needs to explain himself better in the questions. I best have passed, cos i cant be bothered sitting this one again!

Guess that was a bit too much detail! OOPS!

Hey, I found your post hilarious and thought provoking at the same time. I didn’t include the arbitrary HQ overheads (I stated this) because they are non relevant costs. However, what was confusing was whether to start the calculation of NOPAT from after tax profits OR from the operating profit. I chose to start from operating profits; added back depreciation and all non relevant costs then calculated tax to arrive at the NOPAT. Well if this were wrong then I would blame the various ACCA study material providers. There isn’t consistency in their approach.

The transfer pricing was very annoying. I didn’t know what the heck to do with the external provider’s price of 200 (I can’t remember the exact figure) althoug I worked out that the transfer price should be greater than the supplying division’s cost but less than the receiving divisions SP less VC.

The BCG was absolute bol locks. I calculated the market growth and market share but couldn’t figure out were the heck in the matrix it went. The could have gone anywhere! It was like game flipping theory. I think I may have left a question unaswered on that part.

There was another EVA question funnily enough. I answered it but I thought there was some crucial info I was missing? Why would he want to bring up EVA again? In the same paper! Clearly a ruse but I didn’t have enough time to figure out where the trip wires lay.

On a whole I think I left like 16 marks unanswered. I feel tuition perhaps could have bridged this gap. I have sat the last 8 papers working in a crappy lanscaping job and without any tutorial help. I will feel very hard done by if I were to fail this paper again (missed out by 3 marks the last time). But the thing is- would the examiner know I were self taught and would he give a damn?