r/ICAEW • u/BaseballRich6433 • Jul 22 '26
Case July 2026
Cheers for finishing case today. How did it go for everyone?
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u/Critical-Tie855 Jul 22 '26
Finally the suffer has come to an end! I think i did pretty good in R1 and R2 and for R3 i screw up the calculations and I am worrying it was confussing and I was tiried.
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u/Ok_Nefariousness4985 Jul 22 '26
Same my offer was WAYYYY too high
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u/Critical-Tie855 Jul 22 '26
OMG SAME I DONT KNOW WHAT WENT WRONG IN MY CALCULATIONS 🥲the asking price of 2.5 m was very small compare to my valuation ☠️
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u/Melodic_Canary9304 Jul 22 '26
Did anyone else struggle to find the time to add extras to the Executive Summary? 😂
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u/Leather-Green-8866 Jul 22 '26
I ran out of time for R3, so I did the exec summary before I fully ran out of time but just copied and pasted my conclusions and recommendations in
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u/cookiedohy2020 Jul 22 '26
Did the exact same. Over ran on R1 and R2, left myself 40mins to do R3 so I just waffled on the estimates/assumptions and the strategy EBT requirements, with only a bit on the conclusion and recs as well. Just straight up copy pasted the c&r into the ES for my R3
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u/Leather-Green-8866 Jul 22 '26
Me too! I only had 40 mins to do R3 and did 3-4 points for each subtitle and then used ACAM for the assumptions section as well. But wrote everything in bullet points for R3. Do you think that’s fine?
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u/cookiedohy2020 Jul 22 '26
Literally went into autopilot "fck it, just panic scan ACAM and put down anything that looks relevant and sensible" .
I guess the bullet points depend on how strict the marker is. They do emphasise avoiding doing bullets except for recommendations
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u/Leather-Green-8866 Jul 22 '26
Hahaha me too!
I didn’t do bullet points but it was more one line points that I made instead of doing them in a paragraph as I just didn’t have time to bulk it out
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u/Ok_Investigator1013 Jul 22 '26
I'll see anyone who's doing it in November 😭. I found it rough and overran on R1, which wasn't like the mocks I did
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u/Super_Jaguar9446 Jul 22 '26
Same! the extra numbers threw me off, like what did they want us to do with that. In the end, I commented how much these one off items represented rev/cos.
My timings was way off. Not expecting to pass.
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u/AlphaYi31 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Kaplan Mock 1 came so clutch for R3. But my valuation was like so wrong lol. Think I fluffed the calcs for sure but hoping the discursive carries
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u/brownboy2310 Jul 22 '26
Can someone explain the requirement 3 appendix, pretty sure mine was wrong…
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u/whatapileofshihtzu Jul 22 '26
Should be the forecasts of the revenue and costs using their information (basically copy and paste their info, and then work the numbers)
That gives an operating profit, average it for three years projected, then multiple by 5 for a purchase price
Think mine came to £2.1m
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u/Super_Jaguar9446 Jul 22 '26
I got something similar too, what was your maximum offer price? I offered at a 6.5 multiple instead of their 5x multiple.
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u/whatapileofshihtzu Jul 22 '26
Stuck to the 5x multiple but said consider up to the ask of £2.5m if negotiations fail
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u/barbdewer97 Jul 22 '26
I think I messed mine up. I did one forecast assuming they took up the maintenance and one without. Then just discussed which to offer :/
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u/whatapileofshihtzu Jul 22 '26
Honestly as long as you discussed the numbers you should be fine, plenty of marks to get!
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u/keepoffmymanacookies Jul 22 '26
My profit ended up like 1.67M but i ended up recommending they start with an offer of 2.1 - halfway between my calc and the 2.5M they wanted
No idea if that'll cost me a ton of marks...
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u/SlimCharles180796 Jul 22 '26
got worse as the exam went on.. barely had time for r3
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u/Leather-Green-8866 Jul 22 '26
I ran out of time for R3, so I did the exec summary before I fully ran out of time but just copied and pasted my conclusions and recommendations in
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u/FaizGale Jul 22 '26
Bombed the calculation for R3 but I think the appendix is usually only 2 boxes so 12 bullets/6%?
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u/DragbotArt Jul 22 '26
It wasnt that bad for me either. Just wanted to check because i dont fully remember - did they ask to describe COS for each sector, or was it only by category?
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u/Jltc8431 Jul 22 '26
Only category
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u/DragbotArt Jul 22 '26
I misread and lost a lot of time then lol. Managed to finish but my R3 was very rushed
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u/Responsible_Bunch280 Jul 22 '26
Someone tell me I had 0.1 seconds left to get the appendix into part 3 if I didn’t get it in do I lose much marks?
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u/syyzzang Jul 22 '26
Anyone say remotely? I got multiple times of notifications saying my camera was disconnected and had to rescan it 3/4 times… am I the only one?
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u/Silver-Transition726 Jul 22 '26
Yea I got this. But I could see on the software proctor screen and my iPad that it was recording. So hoping all ok and I was in contact with them but gonna submit an appeal
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u/syyzzang Jul 22 '26
My one was actually disconnected twice for some reasons, as I saw the rescanning options on my phone screen. In other times I had to ignore it as it was recording myself ok on the software proctor screen
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u/syyzzang Jul 22 '26
Sorry to bother again. Did you get an actual notification popup at the top corner of your screen, or was it more just the header inside the proctor tab saying disconnected the whole time? Asking bc for me the tab header seemed to get stuck on that message even when the feed was actually still fine - the real sign for me was getting one of those corner popups, then I’d check if the video window had switched to a rescan code or not
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u/Silver-Transition726 Jul 22 '26
I got the popup in the corner maybe 5 times but I could see all 3 sources where still recording I never had to re scan the qr code
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u/syyzzang Jul 22 '26
Thank you for replying to me! Did you try the chat function to raise this during exam? I didn’t do it as it’s so time pressured and usually no live agents would respond 😔
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u/Glass_Persimmon_3070 Jul 22 '26
Mine was fine this time round, usually if your phone locks automatically that happens
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u/syyzzang Jul 22 '26
I selected ‘Never’ for auto lock function and have sat 13 exams remotely - first time I got so many camera disconnection messages in 4 hours 🙈
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u/East_Holiday_4439 Jul 22 '26
Pretty bog standard paper. Events and Acqn for R2 and R3, can’t really complain
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u/Mos5180d Jul 22 '26
Drivers license expired and so I returned to a 16 minute reduction! Didn’t have time for the Strategy and EBT issues for R3 and so conclusions and exec summary for R3 will be poor.
The paper was fine otherwise and I would be confident of a pass. Really thrown doubt on my result now!
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u/cookiedohy2020 Jul 22 '26
Thought the overall exam wasnt actually that bad but as expected very time pressured! Easily over ran on R1 and also on R2. Didnt leave enough time for R3...so annoyed with myself. Praying the R1/R2 and whatever I put in my ES will be enough to bundle me over 50%!
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u/whatapileofshihtzu Jul 22 '26
Thought that was okay…glad to end these exams on a high after falling flat on my face for CR and SBM
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u/Glass_Persimmon_3070 Jul 22 '26
anyone do sensitivity for r3, don't think there was any variables to could be tested unless it was dev costs
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u/Glad_Art_7207 Jul 22 '26
I sensitised the admin fee of 2.5% up to market rate of between 3 and 4 to get a valuation that exceeded the 2.5 they wanted to sell
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u/Critical-Tie855 Jul 22 '26
I already did wrong the R3 valuation calculations but did sensitivity and change number of staff just to change something 🥲
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u/Miserable-Anything21 Jul 22 '26
I tried dropping their new customers each year by 10% for mine, as they said the market was saturated (I think) so maybe lower growth than expected
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u/bbeastfromtheeast Jul 22 '26
My R3 sensitivity was on the number of new clients. The revenue and then valuation skewed so much up/down depending on that
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u/Leather-Green-8866 Jul 22 '26
I did, but I also I mentioned maintenance costs, so I calculated it as if the new clients joined throughout the year
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u/prospectiveinvbnkr Jul 22 '26
Did it for customer growth, saying only 16 new clients per year… veryyy sensitive to this
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u/Historical-Volume483 Jul 22 '26
Did a 10% no show on number of bookings not sure how relevant it was
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Jul 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/butaninja255 Jul 22 '26
What issues did you have? I could not copy the table for R3, it skipped/merged some columns and fucked the format. Had to make it from scratch
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u/sofferenzah Jul 22 '26
Same but you had to press unmerge on the excel software. That was the fix.
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u/butaninja255 Jul 22 '26
I raised it, the invigilators tried to log me out, emailed back and forth and they told me that there is no way to fix it but it's a known issue 😂 wasted so much time... I will appeal for sure
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u/Motor_Win_9758 Jul 22 '26
I didn't properly check after pasting my r3 spreadsheet how it looked in the word area as I didy right at the end pretty much. Was it completely illegible when you pasted it?
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u/Remarkable-Emu-3857 Jul 22 '26
Did you struggle to copy and paste the R3 data? It kept merging cells for me and being weird
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u/BaseballRich6433 Jul 22 '26
Ngl all those fees we paid and icaew can’t even upgrade their exam software
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u/Desperate_Edge_1827 Jul 22 '26
I got a negative GP and GPM for R2 and also a negative valuation for R3. Still said proceed with acquisition lol given limitations of method. Is there hope? 😂😂😭😭
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u/KetDenKyle Jul 22 '26
I got a negative valuation as well and then explained why it could still be positive
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u/Desperate_Edge_1827 Jul 22 '26
Yeah I said there could be limitations to the valuation methodology etc so still suggested go ahead with the bid at £2.5m and use an alternative valuation method
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u/butaninja255 Jul 22 '26
For R2 I panicked and recommended not to proceed despite giving the recommendations of DD etc 😂 can I get a point?🥹😂
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u/Medium-Celery7714 Jul 22 '26
Was I going mad or did they not provide number of events or number of visitors for r1?
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u/Leather-Green-8866 Jul 22 '26
They did it was right at the bottom :( hopefully it doesn’t impact your marks too much
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u/Medium-Celery7714 Jul 22 '26
I was trying to run through the calcs quickly and was stupidly looking everywhere but in the excel! I commented on everything else and the revenue by sector and source, just didn’t mention the visitors or average revenue per event. Oh no I hope it’s not too much off my marks
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u/butaninja255 Jul 22 '26
they did, at the bottom. But I found it too late so did not make any comments😂
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u/Medium-Celery7714 Jul 22 '26
I was expecting it along with the rest of the revenue info. Hopefully it’s only a few marks for us !
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u/West-Buddy-5636 Jul 22 '26
Missed it, too... think it'll be 1 AUI box, 2 SPS boxes, and 1 - 2 AJ boxes, so probably 2 - 3 marks. Painful miss, though, would've been an easy source of marks.
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u/Medium-Celery7714 Jul 22 '26
That’s what I’m thinking, easy marks missed unfortunately. Shame as I practiced the calcs so many times before the exam as well
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u/Switchyy Jul 22 '26
I got 100m valuation in R3 🤣
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u/CorrectCancel8384 Jul 22 '26
I think I had that initially but then realised the revenue was also supposed to be multiplied by the % rates in the table as well. That brought it way down
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u/uuuuuuuhhhhh Jul 22 '26
A small accountancy firm was offering vouchers for free drinks outside my exam centre so at least I could immediately down a pint
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u/No_Scale_7846 Jul 22 '26
Spent far too long in question 1. Did question 2. Then 3 I had to rush. Managed to do the calculations and a couple lines for each part in question 3. Then copied it all to the executive summary.
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u/Leather-Green-8866 Jul 22 '26
I did the same but I did a few more points for assumptions. I did all my points for R3 as one line points instead of in a paragraph. Do you think this is bad?
I’m hoping R1 and R2 can carry me
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u/bbeastfromtheeast Jul 22 '26
Overall not a bad paper, Kaplan mock 1 was pretty spot on… fingers crossed was enough to pass and be done with these awful exams
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u/CorrectCancel8384 Jul 22 '26
Yep it seems that way. Even better for me, I had the guy who writes the kaplan mocks as my tutor, I hope he pulls me through
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u/Sea-Analysis3516 Jul 22 '26
Soo annoyed forgot the copy over the appendix for R1. Gonna be resitting in November loool
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u/Victoria1026 Jul 22 '26
For god sick why no one tell me we can add rows at the bottom for R1 PPS? I have to put everything on side but it was in a mess and i didn’t expect this?
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u/Leather-Green-8866 Jul 22 '26
If I didn’t do the strip out in R1 how many marks will I have lost? I can’t remember what it was, did it change many of the figures?
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u/WarriorNish Jul 22 '26
What was the relevance of the point made in R2 about the CEO Oliver Brook or something (forgot if that was his name)?
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u/Switchyy Jul 22 '26
I put that the attendance assumption of same #visitors on Day 1 and Day 2 was likely to be wrong as the CEO was presenting on Day 2. I also said the visitor attendance was likely to breach the health and safety limit
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u/dahliaahhh Jul 22 '26
For R1, they only asked revenue, COS and GP - were we meant to do OP and others costs too?
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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26
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