Sep 2018 exam

Thoughts?

It was nice to see a trial balance question in there again. Although not having to calculate the depreciation for the year stumped me somewhat.

Also I vaguely remember getting 2 correct responses for the ROCE in the multiple choice, 12.5% and 12.9% from memory... did anyone else find this?

 

For the ROCE question I went with the 12.5% pretty sure.

I thought the paper in general was fairly nice. Got stumped by the depreciation in the profit and loss and ended up including the amounts which they gave in the cost of sales and admin costs which I believe is incorrect, but still hoping to pick up some method marks.

The last question could go either way I think the 6 marker went ok, but the two 7 markers were pure waffle.

Short questions seemed fine also. Fingers crossed.

 

Think the whole point was that the depreciation had already been charged to one of the accounts shown in the trial balance (manufacturing expenses etc). So there was no need to include anything. You'll still pick up a lot of the marks otherwise, the marking scheme seems to be generous in that regard regardless of one or two mistakes.

I thought the finance question for this paper was far better than a lot of the past paper questions, but I suppose that depends on how comfortable you are with betas and WACCs!

 

Yes, I took that approach of not including depreciation. Everything balanced out, it just felt weird because normally depreciation is an item in my cost of sales.

Finance question was certainly easier than it has been in the past. Agree the past 2 parts of Q20 were a bit waffly for me!

All in all, this paper was a relief for me to open up. Compared to some of the tricky past 20-pt questions... it was quite reasonable. Fingers crossed we all pass as the CT2 notes are basically obsolete from here due to the new course coming in and no CMP upgrade between the 2 courses...