Investment decisions

 Is it worth it to put money or “capital” into the profit or business or

machine?

 Capital budgeting decision can be defined as the firms decision to

invest most effectively in the long term projects in anticipation of
an expected flow of benefits in future.

 When to take investment decision?

 Why investment decisions are important?
 What should be the investment decision criteria?

 Guidelines for Investment decision rule

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 Mutually Exclusive Projects: only ONE of several
potential projects can be chosen, e.g., acquiring an
accounting system.
◦ RANK all alternatives, and select the best one.

 Single Independent Projects: accepting or rejecting

one project does not affect the decision of the other
projects.
◦ Must exceed a MINIMUM acceptance criteria

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Discounted cash Non-Discounted cash flows/Non-
flows/Profitability criteria Profitability criteria

 NPV  Payback period

 IRR  Discounted Payback
 Profitability Index  Accounting rate of
return or Average
Accounting return
 How long does it take the project to “pay back” its
initial investment?
 Payback Period = number of years to recover initial
costs
 Minimum Acceptance Criteria:
◦ Set by management based on predetermined standard payback
 Ranking Criteria:
◦ Set by management – highest (one) rank to the project with
shortest payback

5-4
 Constant Cash flow
Payback period = Initial investment/ Annual cash
flow
Assume that a project require an outlay of 50000
and yield annual cash flow of 12500 for seven
years. The payback period for the project is?

Uneven Cash flow

Assume the cash outlay of a project is 20,000 and
generates the cash inflows of 8,000 7,000 4000
and 3000 during the next 4 years. what is the
project payback period?

5-5
 Disadvantages:
◦ Ignores the time value of money
◦ Ignores cash flows after the payback period
◦ Biased against long-term projects
◦ Requires an arbitrary acceptance criteria
◦ A project accepted based on the payback criteria may not
have a positive NPV
 Advantages:
◦ Easy to understand
◦ Biased toward liquidity

- C0 C1 C2 C3 C4
A -4000 3000 1000 2000 1000
B -4000 0 4000 1000 1000
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 How long does it take the project to “pay back” its initial
investment, taking the time value of money into account?
 Decision rule: Accept the project if it pays back on a
discounted basis within the specified time set by management .
 Ranking Criteria:
◦ Set by management – highest (one) rank to the project with
shortest discounted payback
 By the time you have discounted the cash flows, you might as
well calculate the NPV.

 Illustration:
- C0 C1 C2 C3 C4
A -4000 3000 1000 1000 1000
B -4000 0 4000 1000 1000
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 Also known as return on investment, uses
accounting information as revealed by financial
statement to measure the profitability of an
investment.

 Minimum Acceptance Criteria: Accept those

projects whose ARR is higher than Minimum
Acceptance Criteria set by management

 Ranking Criteria: Rank number one to the project

with highest ARR
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  Example: A project will cost 40000. Its stream of EBDIT during first
year through five year is expected to be 10000, 12000, 14000,
16000, and 20000. Assume a 50% tax and depreciation on straight
line basis. Compute ARR.

Period 1 2 3 4 5 Average
EBDIT 10000 12000 14000 16000 20000 14400
(-)Dep 8000 8000 8000 8000 8000 8000
EBIT 2000 4000 6000 8000 12000 6400
(-) Tax 1000 2000 3000 4000 6000 3200
EBIT(1-T) 1000 2000 3000 4000 6000 3200
BV of Investment
Beginning 40000 32000 24000 16000 8000
Ending 32000 24000 16000 8000 -
Average 36000 28000 20000 12000 4000 20000

5-9
 Disadvantages:
◦ Ignores the time value of money
◦ Uses an arbitrary benchmark cutoff rate
◦ Based on book values, not cash flows and market
values
 Advantages:
◦ The accounting information is usually available
◦ Easy to calculate

5-10
 Accepting positive NPV projects benefits
shareholders.
NPV uses cash flows
NPV uses all the cash flows of the project
NPV discounts the cash flows properly

5-11
 Net Present Value (NPV) =
Total PV of future CF’s - Initial Investment
 Estimating NPV:
1. Estimate future cash flows: how much? and when?
2. Estimate discount rate
3. Estimate initial costs
 Minimum Acceptance Criteria: Accept if NPV > 0
 Reject if NPV < 0
 Indifferent if NPV =0
 Ranking Criteria: Choose the highest NPV

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 Ex. Project x Cost $2500 now and is expected to
generate cash flow of $900 $800 $700 $600 &
$500 in next five years respectively. If the
discount rate is 10%, find npv?

5-13
 T o ta l P V o f F uture C a s h F lo w s
PI 
Initia l Inv e s te nt
 Minimum Acceptance Criteria:
◦ Accept if PI > 1
◦ Reject if PI < 1
 ◦ Indifferent if PI = 1

 Ranking Criteria:
◦ Select alternative with highest PI

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 Disadvantages:
◦ Problems with mutually exclusive investments

 Advantages:
◦ May be useful when available investment funds are limited
◦ Easy to understand and communicate
◦ Correct decision when evaluating independent projects

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 Ex. The initial cash outlay of a project is 100000
and can generate cash flow of 40000, 30000,
50000, and 20000 in year1 to year 4. Assume at
10% rate of discount. Find PI of this project?

5-16
 IRR: the discount rate that sets NPV to zero
 Minimum Acceptance Criteria:
◦ Accept if the IRR > the required return, +ve NPV
◦ Reject if the IRR < the required return, -ve NPV
◦ Accept if the IRR = the required return, 0 NPV

 Ranking Criteria:
◦ Select alternative with the highest IRR
 Reinvestment assumption:
◦ All future cash flows are assumed to be reinvested at the
IRR

 NPV gives you answer in dollar return, whereas IRR

gives you answer in percentage return but both will
give same accept/reject decision

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 Disadvantages:
◦ Does not distinguish between investing and
borrowing
◦ IRR may not exist, or there may be multiple IRRs
◦ Problems with mutually exclusive investments

 Advantages:
◦ Easy to understand and communicate

5-18
Consider the following project:
$50 $100 $150

0 1 2 3
-$200
The internal rate of return for this project is 19.44%
$50 $100 $150
NPV  0  200   2 
(1  I R R ) (1  I R R ) (1  I R R ) 3

5-19
If we graph NPV versus the discount rate, we can see the IRR
as the x-axis intercept.
0% $100.00 $150.00
4% $73.88
8% $51.11 $100.00
12% $31.13
16% $13.52 $50.00 IRR = 19.44%
NPV

20% ($2.08)
24% ($15.97) $0.00
28% ($28.38) -1% 9% 19% 29% 39%
32% ($39.51) ($50.00)
36% ($49.54)
40% ($58.60) ($100.00)
44% ($66.82)
Discount rate

5-20
NPV and IRR will generally give the same decision.
Exceptions:
 Are We Borrowing or Lending (Conventional cash flow)
 Multiple IRRs (Non-conventional cash flows – cash
flow signs change more than once): Modified IRR
 The Scale Problem
 The Timing Problem

5-21
Q1. Maxwell software in corporation has the
following mutually exclusive projects.

Year Project A Project B

0 -20000 -24000
1 13200 14100
2 8300 9800
3 3200 7600

Suppose the company payback period cutoff is 2

year. Which of these two projects should be chosen?

Suppose the company uses the NPV rule to rank

these two project, which project should we choose
and if the appropriate discount rate is 15%?

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Q6. Compute the internal rate of return for the
cash flows of the following two projects.
Year Project A Project B
0 -$5700 -$3450
1 $2750 $1380
2 $2800 $1800
3 $1600 $1200

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Q8. Suppose the following two independent
investment opportunities are available to relax
incorporation and the appropriate discount rate is
8.5 %
Year Project Alpha Project Beta
0 -2100 -3700
1 1200 800
2 1100 2300
3 900 2900

Compute the profitability index for each of the two

projects.
Which project should the company accept based on
the profitability index rule?

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Q11. Consider the following cash flows on two mutually exclusive
projects for the Bahamas recreation Corporation. Both projects
required and annual return of 14%.
Year Deepwater fishing New Submarine ride
0 -$850000 -$1650000
1 $320000 $810000
2 $470000 $750000
3 $410000 $690000
As a financial analyst for BRC you are asked the following question:
a. If your decision rule is to accept the project with the greater IRR,
which project should you choose?
b. Because you are fully aware of the IRR rules scale problem, you
calculate the incremental IRR for the cash flows. Based on your
computation, which project should you choose?
c. To be prudent, you compute the NPV for both projects. Which
project should you choose? Is it consistent with the increment the
IRR rule?

5-25
Q18. Consider the following cash flows of two mutually exclusive
projects for Tokyo rubber company. Assume discount rate for both
projects is 8%.
Year Deepwater fishing New Submarine ride
0 -$1700000 -$750000
1 $1100000 $375000
2 $900000 $600000
3 $750000 $390000

a. Based on the payback period which project should be taken?

b. Based on the NPV, which project should be taken?
c. Based on IRR, which project should be taken?
d. Based on this analysis, is incremental IRR analysis necessary? If yes
please conduct the analysis.

5-26
Q23. The Yurdone corporation wants to set up a private
cemetery business. According to the CFO, Berry M. Deep,
business is “looking up”. As a result, the cemetery project will
provide a net cash inflow of $315000 dollars for the firm during
the first year, and the cash flow are projected to grow at a rate
of 4.5 % per year forever. The project requires an initial
investment of $4100000.
a. If your Yurdone requires a return of 11% on search
undertakings, should the cemetery business be started?
b. The company is somewhat unsure about the assumption of a
growth rate of 4.5 % and its cash flows. At what constant
growth rate would the company just break even if it still
required a return of 11% on investment?

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