Case02 Piedmont

Free cash flows of the project for next five years can be calculated by adding depreciation values and subtracting changes in working capital from net income. In 2010, there will be a cash outflow of $2.2 million as capital expenditure. In 2011, there will be an additional one time cash outflow of $300,000 as an advertising expense. Using net free cash flow values for next five years and discount rate for discounting, NPV for the project comes out to be $2907, 100. The rate of return at which net present value becomes zero i.e.

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%.

What are the expected non-operating cash flows when the project is terminated in Year 10?

We assume that risk free rate (Rf) equals rate of long-term Treasury Bonds (as the project’s life is 10 years), so Rf = 9.5%.

The third scenario was ignoring the option to invest in the second-generation project and selling the equipment in year 2. We evaluated this option as a put option. First, we calculated the probabilities for going up and down based on the assumption of a risk neutral word. As a result, the probability of going upward is calculated as 0.3375 and downward probability is 0.6625. In order to determine the present value of all the sequence cash flow at the end of year 2, we calculated the upside change rate and downside change rate as 64.87% and -39.35%, respectfully. The next step is to analyze the option value by using the “Binomial Tree” method. In order to determine the present value of all the subsequence cash flow at the end of year 2, we calculated the cash flow at each node on the tree, until 2006. We discounted all the cash flow at the risk free rate at 10%. The End of Year NPV of all the subsequence cash flow at Year 2 is calculated as $7,571,752, and the selling price of the equipment at end of 2 is $4,000,000, which is the salvage value. We found the NPV of selling the machine at end of Year 2 to be -$2,951,861 as of Year 0, which is negative. The APV of the project after adding the option turned out to be -$6,321,932. This negative APV suggest that the

2. List the questions raised about this situation or that you think that the investigators should ask of the

a) In the first set of calculations, the staff used a discount rate of 20%, a five-year time horizon, and ignored taxes and terminal value. What is the relative attractiveness of these three alternatives?

Southwest traditionally uses a 5% premium over the weighted average cost of capital as a discount rate for long-term projects. This makes certain that the project will only have a positive net present value and be worth the investment if it gives investors a premium for the additional risk they must take on. The expected return on the project of 14.5% gives a 5.9% premium over the calculated

Currently ordering processing is done online. The software and hardware used in this system are about ten years old. As such, order processing is a long, arduous process for the fifteen person staff. Upgrading this process to a state of the art system would cost approximately $2.5 million dollars, and it is a onetime pay in full internal charge to your SBU. It would also result in a reduction in the fifteen person staff by 7 individuals and reduce order

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

Thus, by year three the company will be making a profit off the investment as year three is 86.73 million profit by 55.35 cost giving the company a 31.38 million dollar surplus. Generally, a period of payback of three year or less is acceptable (Reference Entry) causing this project to be viable based off the payback analysis. Although, these calculations are flawed. The reason for this is because the time value of money is not taken into effect when calculating payback periods which is where IRR can further assist in a more realistic financial picture (Reference Entry).

1. Discount rate: The analysis assumes that the discount rate is the same for the complete throughput time of the project. This can be countered by using different discount rates for different years, in case required.

The machine will have a depreciation of $140,000 for the first five years; this is determined by dividing the initial investment by five. The old machine will be sold in 2010 for $25,000 which is below the current book value of $36,000. This is why there is a capital gain of $3,850 that will add to the incremental savings plus the depreciation for that year. The new sheeter will be sold at the end of the last year for $120,000 which will be taxed at 35; this is why a cost of $42,000 appears for the last cash flow (Exhibit 1). The NPV is a positive $1,063,567 and the IRR is 36%, this shows that the project will add value to the company along with having a great return. The payback period for the project is 2.45…Using the growth rate of 3%, the sales are projected to be nearly doubled from 2009 with the new sheeter. However, Pitts believes that he would not be surprised to see them increase by 7% or

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.

If we were assuming that the old semi-automated machines would still be working after 6 years and guaranteeing an operating life of 8 years, then we just had to compare the Net Present Values of both projects. In this case we only had to choose the less negative one because our calculation only contains the costs of both projects. On the other hand, if we were assuming that after six years we would have to buy new machines we must use the equivalent annual annuity approach because of the project's different time horizons.