The Investment Detective

1.1. Review principles of estimating project cash flows. Suggested reading: Ch. 9 “Capital Budgeting and Cash Flow Analysis” in “Contemporary Financial Management”, 11th ed. by Moyer, McGuigan, and Kretlow.

The first project proposal is Match My Doll Clothing line expansion consisted of expanding matching doll and child’s clothing and accessories. The second project proposal is Design Your Own Doll by creating customizable “one of a kind” doll features through the company’s website. The project selection criteria would base on quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative analysis would base on the evaluation of discounting cash flow forecasts to determining the Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and the Payback period of each proposed project. The qualitative analysis would include the potential project value of the company’s overall strategy, innovation, key project risks, and the project interdependencies to the whole company.

The relatively well posed project with promises of great future pay offs must be examined closely nevertheless to determine its true profitability. As such, the Super Project’s NPV must be calculated, however before we proceed we must acknowledge the relevant cash flows. The project incurred an expense of testing the market. This expense, however, must not be included in our cash flow analysis because it can be considered a sunk cost. This expense is required for ‘taking a temperature’ of the market and will not be recovered. Other sources of cash flow include:

the whole amount is not needed at the start of the project, but is financed gradually in three years

* A new project idea which requires an investment of $2 mm and will generate total cash flows (including any salvage or terminal value) next year of either $4mm (recession) or $8mm (boom). The firm has not yet raised the cash to make this investment, but the market is aware of the investment opportunity.

The question that transcends the project is whether equity investors be sufficiently rewarded to justify there financing interests. The answer to this question is dependent

If you invest in the project after five years you will get $ 463,188.77 which is $ 13,188.77 more.

4. What kind of debt (agency debt, bank debt, or Rule 144a bonds) should the sponsors of the project use to fund the deal? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each kind of debt? In your view will project bonds receive an investment grade rating? What is the“weakest link” of the project? How can they improve the likelihood of getting an investment grade?

A project may have more than one IRR, especially when returns of an investment yield negative cash flows following positive cash flows.

Given our recommendation to accept the new investment opportunity, this project will impact the forecasted financial statements from 2010 onwards. Please refer to Exhibits 6 and 7 for the revised projections.

6.The Year 0 net investment outlay for the project is $-475,000. This computed by adding the price of the machinery, installation, shipping, and the change in net working capital. The non-operating cash flow when the project is

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

5. The project is assumed to end in year 4. Do you think that this is realistic? Can you estimate the value of the project’s operating cash flows beyond year 4? State any assumptions you made.

These two cases present the capital investment decisions under consideration by executives of a large chemicals firm in January 2001. The A case (case 20) presents a go/no-go project evaluation regarding improvements to a polypropylene production plant. The B case (case 21) reviews the same project but from one level higher, where the executive faces an either/or investment decision between two mutually exclusive projects. The objective of the two cases is to expose students to a wide range of capital budgeting issues:

The structure of a project’s financing depends on the industry the transaction is taking place, the underlying business model and in particular the allocation of risks and responsibilities between the individual partners (Weber & Alfen, 2010).