Question

Knowing that accounting and reporting laws differ widely around the world thereby posing risks for the international business, briefly explain for each how physical asset valuation (PAV) and research and

development (R&D) costs are likely to pose risks?

Answer 1

Under the United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), companies are obligated to expense Research and Development (R&D) expenditures in the same fiscal year they are spent. This often creates a lot of volatility in profits (or losses) for many companies, as well as in measuring their rates of return on assets and investments. A lack of R&D capitalization could mean that their total assets or their total invested capital do not properly reflect the amount that has been invested into them. As a result, there can be an impact on the company’s Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC). In this guide, we analyze the practice of capitalizing R&D expenses on the balance sheet, versus expensing them on the income statement.

Let us compare GAAP with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Under IFRS rules, research spending is treated as an expense each year, just as with GAAP. By contrast, though, development costs are able to be capitalized if the company can prove that the asset in development will become commercially viable (meaning the technology or product in development is likely to make it through the approval process and generate revenue).

The benefit of the IFRS approach is that at least some research and development costs can be capitalized (i.e., turned into an asset on the company’s balance sheet) instead of being incurred as an expense on the statement of Profit and Loss (P&L). The trade-off, however, is that IFRS requires judgment and subjectivity, which creates a risk that managers will be overly optimistic about how commercially viable a new technology is, which can cause inconsistencies in different companies’ financial statements.

R&D Expense and Earnings Volatility

R&D spending can vary widely from one year to another, which has a significant impact on a company’s profitability. Many businesses in the technology, healthcare, consumer discretionary, energy, and industrial sectors experience this problem.

If a company doesn’t capitalize research and development, its net income can be significantly higher or lower because of the timing of R&D spending. It’s important to note that net income doesn’t include the significant investments in R&D under its cash flow from investing activities. Additionally, this issue seems to contradict one of the main accounting principles, which is that expenses should be matched to the same period when the corresponding revenue is generated.

Research and development is a long-term investment for most companies resulting in many years of revenue, cash flow, and profit, and, thus, should theoretically be capitalized as an asset, not expensed. Without the capitalization of R&D spending, it is more challenging to compare companies in the same industry, as the timing of their research spending can have a big impact on their bottom line in a given year.

The Process of R&D Capitalization vs Expense

From an economic perspective, it seems reasonable that research and development costs should be capitalized, even though it’s unclear how much future benefit they will create. To capitalize and estimate the value of these assets, an analyst needs to estimate how many years a product or technology will generate benefit for (its economic life), and use that as an assumption for the amortization period.

The amortizable life will differ from asset to asset and reflects the economic life of the various products. For example, R&D products developed by a pharmaceutical company would likely last many years (and thus have a long amortization period), since it takes a long time for patents to be approved and there is also some patent protection they can enjoy for several years. R&D amortization for a mobile phone company, however, should be much faster (a smaller number of years) since new phones tend to emerge much more quickly and, thus, have shorter lives.

After estimating the amortization life of R&D expenses, an analyst should gather information on the expenses over past years that related to the research and development of that asset. For example, if the asset is given a commercial life of seven years, then the R&D expense in each of those seven years must be obtained. In the example below, we will assume the amortization of the asset uses the straight-line approach.

Therefore, if the asset has a life of seven years, an analyst would add up all expenses related to researching the asset, and then amortize the value of the asset equally over the seven-year life.