Case Study of Stryker Corporation

For the purpose of calculating the net present value of the project, an appropriate cost of capital has to be calculated at which free cash flows of the project should be discounted. Since the project will be solely financed by selling new shares, cost of equity will be used as the discount rate. Beta for the company can be assumed to be equal to average of the betas of the competitors of the company. This average beta value comes out to be 1.2. Risk free rate is 0.17% while risk premium has been estimated to be 6%. Thus by putting these values in CAPM formula, we can find the cost of equity for the company which is 7.39%.

After evaluating the Super Project for General Foods, the two main things that management needed to address were the relevant incremental and non-incremental cash flows discussed below and incorporate the NPV and the net cash flows (yearly) to make a decision on whether to accept or reject the project. The start-up costs were determined by splitting up the costs of $160,000 in 1967 and $40,000 in 1968. To calculate the yearly cash flows, I used year 1 through 10, and the gross profit was calculated by subtracting out relative cash flows and the before tax depreciation. The NPV of $169,530 is positive for the 10% discount rate, which is less than the IRR of 11.4%.

Estimate the project’s operating cash flows for each year of the project’s economic life. (Hint: Use Table 2 as a guide)

Finally, in order to complete a more accurate comparison between the two projects, we utilized the EANPV as the deciding factor. Under current accepted financial practice, NPV is generally considered the most accurate method of predicting the performance of a potential project. The duration of the projects is different, one lasts four years and one lasts six years. To account for the variation in time frames for the projects and to further refine our selection we calculated the EANPV to compare performance on a yearly basis.

2. Net Present Value – Secondly, Peter needs to investigate the Net Present Value (NPV) of each project scenario, i.e. job type, gross margin, and # new diamonds drills purchased. The NPV will measure the variance of the present value of cash outflow (drilling equipment investment) versus the future value of cash inflows (future profits), at the benchmark hurdle rate of 20%. A positive NPV associated with the investment means that the investment should be undertaken as it exceeds the minimum rate of return. A higher NPV determines which project scenario will have the highest return on cash flow, hence determining the most profitable investment in terms of present money value.

c. Comparing these two options above, option 3 is much more reliable. Having an in-sourcing facility will bring more flexibility as we mentioned before. With a developed in-sourcing proposal, there are a lot of detail estimations about the Option 3. It’s easier for Stryker Corporation to implement this plan step by step.

By computing the highest discount rate at which a project will have a positive NPV, the IRR method is supposed to assure that the actual rate of return on an accepted project is higher than the required rate of return.

MTC initially needed to obtain substantial investment capital due to two main factors: a research-heavy industry, and the need to create most of the markets for its products. Although the founders' goal was to become a major manufacturing company, they did estimate that the company would need $50 million in capital before it would become self-sufficient. Their initial financing model was to first recruit a superior technical team, use that to attract additional equity investment and development funding from interested corporations, and then develop manufacturing capabilities. Commercial sales began 2.5 years after inception, and MTC is nearing the break-even point in 1990.

See Table 1: Expected non-operating cash flow when the project is terminated at year 4 = 165,880$

The present value of the net incremental cash flows, totaling $5,740K, is added to the present value of the Capital Cost Allowance (CCA) tax shield, provided by the Plant and Equipment of $599K, to arrive at the project’s NPV of $6,339K. (Please refer to Exhibit 4 and 5 for assumptions and detailed NPV calculations.) This high positive NPV means that the project will add a significant amount of value to FMI. In addition, using the incremental cash flows (excluding CCA) generated by the NPV calculation, we calculated the project’s IRR to be 28%. This means that the project will generate a higher rate of return than the company’s cost of capital of 10.05%. This is also a positive indication that the company should undertake the project.

The use of an accounting rate of return also underscores a project 's true future profitability because returns are calculated from accounting statements that list items at book or historical values and are, thus, backward-looking. According to the ARR, cash flows are positive due to the way the return has been tabulated with regard to returns on funds employed. The Payback Period technique also reflects that the project is positive and that initial expenses will be retrieved in approximately 7 years. However, the Payback method treats all cash flows as if they are received in the same period, i.e. cash flows in period 2 are treated the same as cash flows received in period 8. Clearly, it ignores the time value of money and is not the best method employed. Conversely, the IRR and NPV methods reflect that The Super Project is unattractive. IRR calculated is less then the 10% cost of capital (tax tabulated was 48%). NPV calculations were also negative. We accept the NPV method as the optimal capital budgeting technique and use its outcome to provide the overall evidence for our final decision on The Super Project. In this case IRR provided the same rejection result; therefore, it too proved its usefulness. Despite that, IRR is not the most favorable method because it can provide false results in the case where multiple negative

After calculating the Total Cash Flow for all three scenarios, the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and Net Present Value (NPV) for the project can be calculated as well. See Question 3 for details regarding WACC calculation. The IRR and NPV for each scenario are shown in Table 4 below:

1. Compute the Free Cash Flows for the years 2010 to 2020 for both projects

4. Based on the information provided in the case, our group calculated the NPV for the project under both tax environment and tax-free condition, respectively, by using the excel spreadsheet and the NPV function. (For a detailed calculation of NPV, please refer to Appendix Under 15-yr.) According to our calculation, we have the following results: In the first case scenario, which the firm is in a tax environment (35% income tax), the NPV of the project equals to -$6,366,054.53

NPV and IRR: When examining the NPV and the IRR of the Merseyside project, the numbers were very attractive. It had a positive net present value and an IRR above 10 percent. By these numbers, along with others,