Gator Electronics Inc. an electronics manufacturer that sells electronic products to third-party retail centers has identified its reporting units as geographical regions in which it operates: United States, South America, Canada, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Gator Electronics elected not to perform the qualitative assessment for determining whether it is more likely than not that the fair value of a reporting unit is less than its carrying amount and proceeded with Step 1 of the quantitative two-step goodwill impairment test for all reporting units. On the basis of the valuation prepared by Management’s Expert, Gator estimated that the fair value of all of the reporting units exceeded their respective carrying values and no Step 2 analysis was required or prepared.
Fair value, as defined by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), is the price that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date. Although GAAP does not prescribe the methods for measuring the fair value of an item, it expresses a preference for the use of observable market prices to make that determination. In the absence of observable market prices, GAAP requires fair value to be based on the best information available in the circumstances, which is inherently imprecise due to the underlying assumptions about future conditions, transactions, or events whose outcome is uncertain and will, therefore, be subject to change over time.
In planning an audit, auditors assess the risk of material misstatement in the entity’s financial statements. This assessment takes into consideration many aspects of the entity, and it ultimately results in the nature, timing, and extent of planned audit procedures for the entire engagement. Because of the wide range of possible fair value measurements