Reto Sa

Estimate the cost of capital for financing (Hint: Interest expense and total debt – Ascertain the return on equity to provide measures for the interest rate and the return to stockholders.

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.

Before moving forward to compute the present value of these cash flows, a terminal value is required to forecast the long term value of the company after 5 years. . Following formula is used to calculate the terminal value.

What is the cost of equity capital appropriate for evaluating the free cash flow associated with this investment?

The 8 percent pre-tax estimate is the nominal cost of debt. Because the firm's debt has semiannual coupons, its effective annual cost rate is 8.16 percent

The equipment can be depreciated by one of two methods: Section 179 allows for a full write off in the year of acquisition (subject to certain limits). MACRS depreciation allows a systematic write off of equipment based on the type of asset. More business assets are either 5 year or 7 year property (CompleteTax, 2012).

After carefully reviewing the income statement, balances sheet and cash flow it seems that the company has a negative cash flow for 1998, so even before thinking about obtaining internal and external resources for long term investment, the company must assure resources for their own working capital.

As shown in the ratios chart, working capital has increased by $13M. Maturities of short-term investments and cash flow from operations are projected to be sufficient to sustain the company’s overall financing needs, including capital expenditures. The following corporate strategic plan identifies a project that needs financial backing.

Next, the terminal value at year ten was calculated. The following formula was used to do so: terminal value at year 10 = (FCF at year 11)/(WACC - g). This time we used the long-term growth rate of 7up, which was given by the case as 1% less than the industry rate. This resulted in a terminal value of $848M with its present value calculation being $231M.

As opposed to purchasing new equipment, we could opt to maintain the equipment we currently have, which has an estimated service life of 11 years remaining. We could retain all of our claimed Investment Tax Credit for this purchase, which has two years of depreciation left, and would not be required to invest in any new training for our employees. We would recognize $31,000 in depreciation in present value terms, as well as save an estimated $200,000 in training costs and losses due to lower production during the “learning curve”. I estimate these savings to be approximately one month of payroll to include both the time spent on training, and our reduced production as employees learn how to use the new equipment. Additional detail of this option is provided in Appendix B, C, & D.

* Net working capital of 5% of sales will be used for both Paducah and ACP project

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

For future cash flows, evaluation is done with WACC rate which consists from cost of equity and cost of debt in a weighted average. In this case, using cost of equity is not appropriate since we doesn’t know cost of debt and weights of equity and debt, it doesn’t reflect the actual rate for WACC.

The actual production would begin in the third quarter of this year, therefore only half year’s depreciation should be counted on Equipment and IT communication in 2004 (According to Appendix A). The following years (2005-2008) incremental cash flows are computed by the same method. However as the IT equipment and furnishings would be depreciated on a straight line basis over 3 years, thus in year four (2007), there would be only half a year’s deprecation left and after that it will be used up. The last year’s net cash flow in 2009 should be included the extra terminal Value on that year, which includes 24 years’ residual value on building and one year and a half residual value on equipment totaled $2,990,412 with two assumptions of by using residual book values for the building and operating equipment and there will be no further NWS advantage after year 2009. Finally, by obtaining 6 years’ incremental cash-flows and discounting them back to time zero (with the estimate rate of return by 15%) lessing initial cost to get an appealing NPV of $1190528 (Luehrman, p. 3).

By focusing on the used equipment and liquidating the repossessed units will generate an increase to marginal revenue since the variable costs for those units do not exist.