Financial performance

IFRS 18 Presentation and Disclosure in Financial Statements – Best read

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IFRS 18 Presentation and Disclosure in Financial Statements

The IASB’s newly issued standard IFRS 18 mainly deals with the presentation of the income statement, balance sheet and certain footnotes. At the same time, certain aspects of the cash flow statement are modified. IFRS 18 does not change the recognition and measurement of the components of financial statements; therefore, the amounts reported as shareholders’ equity and net income are both unchanged. However, it will have a significant impact on the presentation and disaggregation of what is reported (primarily in the income statement and footnotes), including what subtotals companies must provide and how these are defined.

There are five main areas where we think the new standard will help investors as users of IFRS Financial Statements:IFRS 18 Presentation and Disclosure in Financial Statements

Operating–Investing–Financing classification

IFRS 18 aims to establishes a structured statement of profit or loss by implementing the following measures:

  • It introduces three defined categories for income and expenses: operating, investing, and financing.
    • Operating – income/expenses resulting from the company’s main business operations.
    • Investing – income/expenses from:
      • investments in associates, joint ventures and unconsolidated subsidiaries;
      • cash and cash equivalents;
      • assets that generate a return individually and largely independently (e.g. rental income from investment properties).
    • Financing – consisting of:
      • income/expenses from liabilities related to raising finance only (e.g. interest expense on borrowings); and
      • interest income/expenses and effects of changes in interest rates from other liabilities (e.g. interest expense on lease liabilities).
  • It mandates to present new defined totals and subtotals, including operating profit, thereby enhancing the clarity and consistency of financial reporting.

Entities primarily engaged in investing in assets or providing finance to customers are subject to specific categorisation requirements. This entails that additional income and expense items, which would typically be classified as investing or financing activities, are instead categorised under operating activities. Consequently, operating profit reflects the outcomes of an entity’s core business operations. Identifying the main business activity involves exercising judgment based on factual circumstances.

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EBITDA – 1 Best complete read

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EBITDA – Earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortisation

– is a measure of a company’s overall financial performance and is used as an alternative to simple earnings or net income in some circumstances. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, however, can be misleading because it strips out the cost of capital investments like property, plant, and equipment.

This metric also excludes expenses associated with debt by adding back interest expense and taxes to earnings. Nonetheless, it is a more precise measure of corporate performance since it is able to show earnings before the influence of accounting and financial deductions.EBITDA

Simply put, Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation is a measure of profitability. While there is no legal requirement for companies to disclose their EBITDA (here also written as EBIT-DA), according to the U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (US GAAP) or International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), it can be worked out and reported using information found in a company’s financial statements.

The earnings, tax, and interest figures are found on the income statement, while the depreciation and amortisation figures are normally found in the notes to operating profit or on the cash flow statement. The usual shortcut to calculate EBITDA is to start with operating profit, also called earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) and then add back depreciation and amortisation.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/EBITDA

Origins of EBITDA

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Example accounting policies

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Example accounting policies

Get the requirements for properly disclosing the accounting policies to provide the users of your financial statements with useful financial data, in the common language prescribed in the world’s most widely used standards for financial reporting, the IFRS Standards. First there is a section providing guidance on what the requirements are, followed by a comprehensive example, easy to tailor to the specific needs of your company.Example accounting policies

Example accounting policies guidance

Whether to disclose an accounting policy

1. In deciding whether a particular accounting policy should be disclosed, management considers whether disclosure would assist users in understanding how transactions, other events and conditions are reflected in the reported financial performance and financial position. Disclosure of particular accounting policies is especially useful to users where those policies are selected from alternatives allowed in IFRS. [IAS 1.119]

2. Some IFRSs specifically require disclosure of particular accounting policies, including choices made by management between different policies they allow. For example, IAS 16 Property, Plant and Equipment requires disclosure of the measurement bases used for classes of property, plant and equipment and IFRS 3 Business Combinations requires disclosure of the measurement basis used for non-controlling interest acquired during the period.

3. In this guidance, policies are disclosed that are specific to the entity and relevant for an understanding of individual line items in the financial statements, together with the notes for those line items. Other, more general policies are disclosed in the note 25 in the example below. Where permitted by local requirements, entities could consider moving these non-entity-specific policies into an Appendix.

Change in accounting policy – new and revised accounting standards

4. Where an entity has changed any of its accounting policies, either as a result of a new or revised accounting standard or voluntarily, it must explain the change in its notes. Additional disclosures are required where a policy is changed retrospectively, see note 26 for further information. [IAS 8.28]

5. New or revised accounting standards and interpretations only need to be disclosed if they resulted in a change in accounting policy which had an impact in the current year or could impact on future periods. There is no need to disclose pronouncements that did not have any impact on the entity’s accounting policies and amounts recognised in the financial statements. [IAS 8.28]

6. For the purpose of this edition, it is assumed that RePort Co. PLC did not have to make any changes to its accounting policies, as it is not affected by the interest rate benchmark reforms, and the other amendments summarised in Appendix D are only clarifications that did not require any changes. However, this assumption will not necessarily apply to all entities. Where there has been a change in policy, this will need to be explained, see note 26 for further information.

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The real meaning of Integrated reporting

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The real meaning of integrated reporting

Integrated reporting is more than only aimed at informing interested stakeholders about performance achieved against targets, the vision and strategy adopted to serve the stakeholders’ interests, and other factors that can influence business performance in future.

Clearly regulations require companies to exercise transparency. However, a more fundamental reason for reporting lies in accountability: a company needs to account for the impact it has on the stakeholders it relates to. Not exercising such transparency would impose serious risks, including high financing costs to compensate for a lack of transparency or governance or, ultimately, losing the license to operate. By contrast, a transparent approach would not only improve reputation, but also would bind stakeholders such as employees to the company’s objectives.

The reason for including environmental and social factors in reporting

In today’s world companies play a significant role in shaping the future of society. Awareness of this has risen significantly over the last decades, resulting in changed attitudes towards the role business is expected to play.

It also resulted in changes in the views of business leaders about the role they want to play.

Business these days is seen more than ever as the agent of a wide group of stakeholders. Unlike the old paradigm that ‘the business of business is business’, companies accept wider accountability in current times towards the stakeholders whose interests they impact – no longer can companies focus only on the interests of those with a financial interest.

This wider accountability implies that companies have to fulfil the (information) needs of those who provide them with integrated reportingother economic resources such as labour, space, air or natural resources and those who enter into transactions with the organization such as customers. Therefore a company’s current performance and future ability to continue operations and achieve business growth needs to be evaluated on the basis of a comprehensive set of factors that influence these.

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Transfer pricing – IAS 12 Best complete read

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Transfer pricing
 for
transactions between related parties

A transfer price is the price charged between related parties (e.g., a parent company and its controlled foreign corporation) in an inter-company transaction. Although inter-company transactions are eliminated when consolidating the financial results of controlled foreign corporations and their domestic parents, for preparation of individual tax returns each entity (or a tax consolidation unit of more than one entity in the group in one and the same tax jurisdiction) prepares stand-alone (or a tax consolidation unit) tax returns.

See also:

IAS 24 Related parties narrative IFRS 15 Revenue narrative IAS 12 Income tax narrative

Transfer prices directly affect the allocation of group-wide taxable income across national tax jurisdictions. Hence, a group’s transfer-pricing policies can directly affect its after-tax income to the extent that tax rates differ across national jurisdictions.

Arm’s length transaction principle

Most OECD countries rely upon the OECD TP Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations, that were originally released in 1995 and subsequently updated in 2017 (OECD TP Guidelines). The OECD TP Guidelines reaffirmed the OECD’s commitment to the arm’s length transaction principle.

In fact, the arm’s length transaction principle is considered “the closest approximation of the workings of the open market in cases where goods and services are transferred between associated enterprises.” The arm’s length principle implies that transfer prices between related parties should be set as though the entities were operating at arm’s length (i.e. were independent enterprises).

The application of the arm’s length transaction principle is generally based on a comparison of all the relevant conditions in a controlled transaction with the conditions in an uncontrolled transaction (i.e. a transaction between independent enterprises).

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What Is Fintech reporting IFRS 15

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What Is Fintech or Financial Technology And Its Benefits?

New and fast-growing technologies like Financial Technology or Fintech have the potential benefits to collect and process data in real-time. This transforms how all businesses are working, how products and services are creating in the new economy, and how customers are engaging in this process. Every professional and commercial industry is affecting due by this change in workflows and business processes. The financial and economic sector is no exception.

Financial Technology or Fintech?

Fintech, short for Financial Technology, is a growing field and is now an economic revolution by the tech-savvy. It is the development of new technology to transform traditional institutions such as banks and insurance companies by uplift how they handle their finances and economic services. The process is not only digitizing money but also monetizing data to fit into the digitized world.

FinTech solutions have huge potential benefits for all businesses, especially new and existing small businesses. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are essential for economic maturity and employment. However, others may find it difficult to get the financing they need to survive and thrive.

Example

Automated drafting of portfolio management commentaries – Analytics & Reporting (October 2018, Societe Generale Securities Services)

Addventa Fintech exclusive partnership for automated drafting of portfolio management commentaries based on artificial intelligence solutions.

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Lessee accounting under IFRS 16

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Lessee accounting under IFRS 16

The key objective of IFRS 16 is to ensure that lessees recognise assets and liabilities for their major leases.

1. Lessee accounting model

A lessee applies a single lease accounting model under which it recognises all leases on-balance sheet, unless it elects to apply the recognition exemptions (see recognition exemptions for lessees in the link). A lessee recognises a right-of-use asset representing its right to use the underlying asset and a lease liability representing its obligation to make payments. [IFRS 16.22]

[IFRS 16.47, IFRS 16.49]

IFRS 16 Balance sheet Profit or loss

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IFRS 16 Lessor accounting

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IFRS 16 Lessor accounting

Lessors continue to classify leases as finance or operating leases.

1. Lessor accounting model

The lessor follows a dual accounting approach for lease accounting. The accounting is based on whether significant risks and rewards incidental to ownership of an underlying asset are transferred to the lessee, in which case the lease is classified as a finance lease. This is similar to the previous lease accounting requirements that applied to lessors. The lessor accounting models are also essentially unchanged from IAS 17 Leases. [IFRS 16.B53, IFRS 16.BC289]

Are the lessee and lessor accounting models consistent?

No. A key consequence of the decision to retain the IAS 17 dual accounting model for lessors is a lack of consistency with the new lessee accounting model. This can be seen in the case Lease classification below:

There are also more detailed differences. For example, lessees and lessors use the same guidance for determining the lease term and assessing whether renewal and purchase options are reasonably certain to be exercised, and termination options not reasonably certain to be exercised. However, unlike lessees, lessors do not reassess their initial assessments of lease term and whether renewal and purchase options are reasonably certain to be exercised, and termination options not reasonably certain to be exercised (see changes in the lease term in the link).

Other differences are more subtle. For example, although the definition of lease payments is similar for lessors and lessees (see lease payments in the link), the difference is the amount of residual value guarantee included in the lease payments.

  • The lessor includes the full amount (regardless of the likelihood that payment will be due) of any residual value guarantees provided to the lessor by the lessee, a party related to the lessee or a third party unrelated to the lessor that is financially capable of discharging the obligations under the guarantee.
  • The lessee includes only any amounts expected to be payable to the lessor under a residual value guarantee.

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Sub-leases under IFRS 16

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Sub-leases under IFRS 16

The classification guidance in IFRS 16 means that many sub-leases are finance leases, impacting the financial position and financial performance of intermediate lessors.

A sub-lease is a transaction in which a lessee (or ‘intermediate lessor’) grants a right to use the underlying asset to a third party, and the lease (or ‘head lease’) between the original lessor and lessee remains in effect.

A company applies IFRS 16 to all leases of right-of-use assets in a sub-lease. The intermediate lessor accounts for the head lease and the sub-lease as two different contracts, applying both the lessee and lessor accounting requirements. [IFRS 16.3]

Sub-leases under IFRS 16

An intermediate lessor classifies the sub-lease as a finance lease or as an operating lease with reference to the right-of-use asset arising from the head lease. That is, the intermediate lessor treats the right-of-use asset as the underlying asset in the sub-lease, not the item of property, plant or equipment that it leases from the head lessor. [IFRS 16.B58]

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Disclosure Financial risk management

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Disclosure Financial risk management

Disclosure financial risk management provides the guidance on the need for disclosure of the management policies, procedures and measurement practices in place at the operations within the reporting entity’s group of companies and an actual example of disclosures for financial risk management.

Disclosure Financial risk management guidance

Classes of financial instruments

Where IFRS 7 requires disclosures by class of financial instrument, the entity shall group its financial instruments into classes that are appropriate to the nature of the information disclosed and that take into account the characteristics of those financial instruments. The classes are determined by the entity and are therefore distinct from the categories of financial instruments specified in IFRS 9. Disclosure Financial risk management

As a minimum, the entity should distinguish between financial instruments measured at amortised cost and those measured at fair value, and treat as separate class any financial instruments outside the scope of IFRS 9. The entity shall provide sufficient information to permit reconciliation to the line items presented in the balance sheet. Guidance on classes of financial instruments and the level of required disclosures is provided in Appendix B to IFRS 7. [IFRS 7.6, IFRS 7.B1-B3]

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