25 September Balancing Brexit & FX Balance Sheet Hedging September 25, 2017By FX Initiative General, Hedging FX Transactions Balance Sheet, Best Practices, British pound sterling, Cash Flows, Continuing Professional Education, CPE, Earnings, FX, FX Initiative, GBP, Hedge, Income Statement, Management, Risk, US dollar, USD, Brexit 0 As Brexit continues to capture news headlines, FX Initiative is increasingly helping North American companies manage the currency risk associated with doing business in the United Kingdom (UK). Brexit refers to the prospective withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU), which was voted on in June of 2016. Since the referendum, the value of the British pound (GBP) versus the US dollar (USD) has fluctuated from highs near 1.4500 levels in June of 2016 to lows near 1.2000 levels in January of 2017. This approximate 15% decline in value has prompted many international companies to adapt their foreign exchange (FX) hedging programs to better stabilize earnings and preserve cash flows. American companies exporting to the United Kingdom have seen significant fluctuations in their GBP denominated revenues and accounts receivables (A/R), which are translated into USD in their financial statements for accounting purposes. To state the obvious, the 15% fluctuation in GBP/USD exchange rates over a 15 month period has created sizable swings in earnings and cash flows for firms that operate with a non-GBP functional currency. To mitigate this volatility, one major US pharmaceutical company needed to reconsider their FX balance sheet hedge program to better respond to the changing political landscape and unpredictable currency market prices. Balance sheet hedging is by far the most common approach among multinational corporations when hedging foreign exchange risk, and in the context of Brexit, refers to hedging GBP denominated receivables and payables on the balance sheet as part of a systematic hedge program at each period or month end, or upon booking a material foreign currency denominated transaction. This US pharmaceutical company was previously hedging at each month end to adjust and match the amount of the their underlying GBP receivables with the amount of their GBP forward contract hedges. However, the majority of their monthly receivable bookings occurred on the 15th of each month, and their mid-month A/R bookings were largely unhedged from the middle of the month through month end. To address this problem, FX Initiative helped assess the mechanics of their balance sheet hedge program by looking at their financial reporting process and specifically at their accounting booking convention. An accounting booking convention refers to the foreign exchange rate used to record a transaction on the financial statements. In this case, they were using the daily spot rate, which meant they were exposed to changes in exchange rates for each mid-month booking of a material GBP receivable transaction. By probing all the way down to the accounting booking convention, this US company was able to quickly and effectively enhance their balance sheet hedge program by adding one additional “true-up” hedge mid-month. Their revised approach meant that rather than only hedging at the end of each month, the company was now adjusting the amounts on their forward contract hedge both mid-month and at month end. The result of this fundamental fix was that the company is now hedging over 90% of their GBP exposure for the entire month, and the FX swings in their monthly and quarterly earnings have declined by over 50%. Regardless of whether you are a FX risk management expert or novice, knowing where to diagnose a FX exposure is critical and having the ability to drill down to a technical level of detail such as an accounting booking convention can help companies conquer currency market challenges more efficiently and effectively. FX Initiative’s training and consulting services can help your global organization establish and improve your foreign exchange balance sheet hedge program. We use real-world examples from Apple to demonstrate how a balance sheet hedge works in practice, and our risk modeling tools enable you to practice your approach prior to implementation to get comfortable with the economics and accounting. While events like Brexit are hard to predict, a consistent and ongoing foreign exchange risk management program can proactively protect against changing political, regulatory, and economic environments. FX hedging is about making the outcome more certain, so give your company the FX certainty and predictably it needs to succeed abroad by taking the FX Initiative! Ready to build a better FX balance sheet hedge program? Click here to start your Currency Risk Management training! Cheers, The FX Initiative Team support@fxinitiative.com Related Posts CPE Webinar Invite: Balance Sheet Hedging Program Overview FX Initiative cordially invites you to attend our webinar on Balance Sheet Hedging on Thursday, March 11th 2021 at 11AM Pacific / 2PM Eastern. Join us and learn how to hedge FX receivables & payables and mitigate FX gains & losses. This Balance Sheet Hedging webinar will teach you how to hedge foreign exchange (FX) receivables and payables to mitigate FX gains and losses on the Income Statement. We will begin by defining the concept of a balance sheet hedge, and explore why is it often viewed as the foundation of many corporate FX risk management programs. We will break down the impact of how FX receivables and payables, which are known as underlying positions, produce FX gains and losses on the financial statements from mark-to-market accounting treatment. We will then explore how to offset those underlying FX gains and losses on the Income Statement by hedging with forward contracts to reduce periodic earnings volatility. Finally, we examine best practices for optimizing balance sheet hedges by considering details such as accounting booking rates, netting of exposures, and adjusting ... Webinar Series: Balance Sheet Hedging Program Overview FX Initiative cordially invites you to attend our webinar series. Join us and learn how to hedge FX receivables & payables and mitigate FX gains & losses. This Balance Sheet Hedging webinar will teach you how to hedge foreign exchange (FX) receivables and payables to mitigate FX gains and losses on the Income Statement. We will begin by defining the concept of a balance sheet hedge, and explore why is it often viewed as the foundation of many corporate FX risk management programs. We will break down the impact of how FX receivables and payables, which are known as underlying positions, produce FX gains and losses on the financial statements from mark-to-market accounting treatment. We will then explore how to offset those underlying FX gains and losses on the Income Statement by hedging with forward contracts to reduce periodic earnings volatility. Finally, we examine best practices for optimizing balance sheet hedges by considering details such as accounting booking rates, netting of exposures, and adjusting hedges as balances change from cash inflows and outflows. Learning Objectives Discover the concept of a ... Learn FX Balance Sheet Hedging Basics Would you like to learn FX balance sheet hedging basics? FX Initiative’s Balance Sheet Hedging webinar walks you through common FX asset, liability and equity accounts on the balance sheet, the mark-to-market or fair value accounting process and the ways firms can minimize the income statement impact of fluctuating FX rates using derivatives. Upon completion of this program, Fortune 500 companies and small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) alike will learn best practices for optimizing and adjusting balance sheet hedges that can help mitigate the impact of fluctuating FX rates and stabilize periodic reported earnings. Get started with our foreign exchange risk management training, which provides 24/7 365 access to our complete suite of foreign exchange (FX) continuing professional education (CPE), examples and events at FXCPE.com. Start Training > Download the PDF Attend the Balance Sheet Hedging webinar! You're invited to the Balance Sheet Hedging webinar! Thursday, September, 20th | 2PM Eastern | 1 CPE Credit Program Overview Join us for a live webinar and learn how to hedge FX receivables & payables and mitigate FX gains & losses. This 1-hour session covers 4 key learning objectives: Discover the concept of a foreign exchange (FX) balance sheet hedge program. Recognize how FX receivables and payables impact the financial statements. Explore how forward contracts can be used to mitigate FX gains and losses. Identify best practices for optimizing and adjusting balance sheet hedges. Who Should Attend New and seasoned finance, accounting, treasury, and related professionals (CPA, CIA, CRMA, CFE, etc.) interested in international business. Join Us CPE Webinar Invite: Cash Flow Hedging Program Overview FX Initiative cordially invites you to attend our webinar titled “Cash Flow Hedging” on Thursday, March 25th at 11AM Pacific / 2PM Eastern. Join us for a continuing professional education (CPE) program and earn CPE credit as we learn how to how to hedge and account for forecasted foreign exchange (FX) revenues and expenses. We will begin by defining the concept of a cash flow hedge, and how companies incorporate this type of hedge into a larger FX risk management program across the enterprise. We will then examine how FX revenues and expenses impact the financial statements with a focus on the limited visibility into a transaction’s FX gain or loss to date. From there, we will explore hedging FX revenues and expenses with forward contracts, and address the impact on cash flows as well as the options that are available to account for derivative instruments and hedging activities. Lastly, we will identify best practices for hedging forecasted FX transactions and emphasize how public and private companies prioritize their foreign exchange hedging objectives in order to achieve their desired risk management results. Learning ... Hypothetical FX Hedging Simulations To become proficient in any skill, including currency risk management, practice makes perfect. To help companies practice, FX Initiative’s Foreign Exchange Transaction Simulator addresses a wide variety of FX scenarios by stress-testing hypothetical FX hedging strategies. This interactive risk modeling tool illustrates the economics and accounting of the most common hedging strategies for underlying foreign exchange exposures such as revenues, expenses, receivables, and payables. You can simply input your company specific and foreign exchange market variables, and then select your hedging strategy, which includes not hedging or hedging with a forward contract, vanilla option or zero cost collar. The resulting output is a highly detailed interactive FX risk analysis that charts the economic payoff of your selected hedging strategy, ranks the alternative hedging strategies, and reports the accounting journal entries and t-accounts with authoritative references to U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Behind the scenes, our robust pricing engine and database simplifies the risk analysis process for you so you can focus on the bottom line impact to your business. This versatile tool transforms 16 inputs into one information rich analysis in 3 ... Comments are closed.