To derive my forecast, I took the first method called T-account forecasting . So from the results of the year 1992, I made first the income statement and after the balance sheet which are not very difficult to do because all of the parts ( for example cost of goods sold, dividends, …) are linked together. Afterwards, to do the “iterate”, it is almost the same principle. But at the end, I had an amount for the debt negative, I was a little bit surprised. To solve that, as the case asks, I introduced the notion of excess cash which “hide” the problem of the negative debt.
I chose the “base case” because I think it is more precize and rigourous than the other one called “Percent-of-sales forecasting”. Indeed with the second method, we use the percent of sales as a key to forecast all of the amounts of the balance sheet and the income statement, I think it gives less the reality.
In addition, we don’t know exactly which percent of the sales will be really use for the future, we have the results of 3 years before but we can’t say with a total presision if it will continue like that or if a charge will disappear or change completely. The results of the two methods are a little bit different but I prefer to keep the results of the first one which are, from my mind, nearest of the reality than the other one.