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Worldwide Paper Company Case Write Up

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In the case of Worldwide Paper Company we performed calculations to decide whether they should accept a new project or not. We calculated their net income and their cash flows for this project (See Table 1.6 and 1.5). We computed WPC’s weighted average cost of capital as 9.87%. We then used the cash flows to calculate the company’s NPV. We first calculated the NPV by using the 15% discount rate; by using that number we calculated a negative NPV of $2,162,760. We determined that the discount rate of 15% was out dated and insufficient. To calculate a more accurate NPV for the project, we decided to use the rate of 9.87% that we computed. Using this number we got the NPV of $577,069. With the NPV of $577,069 our conclusion is to accept this…show more content…
We then took 40% of those totals (which is the dollar amount of taxes paid) and subtracted that number from the income before taxes to get net income (See Table 1.5). WPC has used a discount rate of 15% to evaluate potential projects for the last 10 years. Many in management are correct in thinking that this rate should be evaluated on a much more frequent basis. The current rate of 15% is much too high considering the yield on treasury bonds has declined from 10% to 5% over the last ten years. In order to calculate the correct discount rate we must first determine what their equity and debt ratios are. As you can see in Exhibit1, in order to find the total value of equity we must multiply the number of total outstanding shares of stock times the market value of each share. Completing this calculation shows us that WPC has $12 billion in outstanding equity. WPC also has $2.5 billion in outstanding debt. If you add the debt and equity together we see that WPC has a total of $14.2 billion in outstanding financing. Assuming the 10 year rate of Government Bonds of 4.60% as our risk free rate and using the Capital Asset Pricing Model we find that that WPC’s return on equity is 11.2% (See Exhibit 1). As stated in the case, Worldwide Paper Company has an A bond rating so we can use the 5.78% for their return on debt. Combining all of these variables in the Weighted Average Cost of
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