Depreciation and New Equipment

We assumed that the cost of graphite which according to exhibit 8 has been growing slower year on year would grow steadily at 4% and that power costs would grow at 12% per year up to 1989. We also assumed that the benefits of laminate technology will only be felt starting in 1981. With 1980 as the base year, the NPV calculation was done as at December, 1980 and we assumed that the cash injection of $2.5million dollars would occur instantaneously in December 1980. Using a median assumption of power cost savings of 17.5%, we arrive at an NPV of $12.865million for the laminate investment. The applicable range and full calculations are presented below.

Scenario 1B: Purchase carrier at 0% tax rate. If the boat were to be commissioned in Hong Kong, where there is 0% corporate income tax, the value of the scrap would become $6,719,582 and the NPV after 25 years will be $977,267.

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?

Question Number One (1) Value the processing plant proposal. Ignore the Industrial Revenue Bond financing. Assume: Market Risk Premium 8.8%, Riskless Rate 11.41%, and Harris Long Term Debt Rate 13.5%.

In January 2003, Michael Pogonowski, the chief financial officer of Aurora Textile Company, was questioning whether the company should install a new ring-spinning machine, the Zinser 351, in the Hunter production facility. This new machine has ability to produce a finer-quality yarn that would be used for higher-quality and higher-margin products. In deciding whether or not to invest this new machine, NPV and the payback period are critical factors. Firstly, we need to forecast the cash flows that the Zinser 351 will generate in the future. After calculation, the ten-year NPV will be $3, 172,582. Secondly, we use the payback period to analyze the acceptance of this project. Based on this analysis,

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.

Natalie estimates that all of her baking equipment will have a useful life of 5 years or 60 months and no salvage value. (Assume Natalie decides to record a full month’s worth of depreciation, regardless of when the equipment was obtained by the business.)

Estimated machinery life: 3 years (after which there will be zero value for the equipment and no further cost savings)

The upgrade of the Rotterdam plant involves implementing the Japanese technology and requires a capital expenditure of £8.0 million with £3.5 million spent today, £2.0 million on year one, £1.0 million on year two and £1.0 million on year three. This will also increase polypropylene output by 7% from current levels at a rate of 2.0% per year. In addition, gross margin will improve by 0.8% per year from 11.5% to 16.0%. After auditing the financial models, it is concluded that the static net present value of the upgrade is -£6.35 million using a discount rate of 10% and an expected inflation rate of 3% annually. The Rotterdam upgrade contains an option to switch to the speculated German technology being available in five years. The current value of the option is zero as it is deeply out-of-the-money. The total net present value of the upgrade is -£6.35 million. The incremental earnings per share of the upgrade is £ 0.0013, the payback period is 14.13 years, and the internal rate of return is 18.7%.

These amounts of tax savings should be added to the incremental cost savings for each year to come up with the total cash inflows. The present value of all these cash inflows and outflows can be calculated by discounting them at 12.19%. This rate is calculated by assuming that the purchasing power parity holds in this scenario. The company can do the feasibility analysis by looking at both from the subsidiary’s and parent’s perspective by assuming that the purchasing power parity holds. Hence, this rate can be regarded as opportunity cost of investment because it is the second best alternative for the company for investment purposes.

The option to buy for 36 months follows the same logic with one exception. In this case, the hardware is no longer estimated to have a $150/unit salvage value. Instead, it is estimated that 20% of the computers can be sold to AMG employees for $50/unit. According to EPA regulations, the other 80% must be disposed of at a cost of $50. With this in mind, the NPV of cash flows for the 36 month buying option is $(5,687,735). To compare this to the 24 month buying option, the equivalent annual cost was calculated for both scenarios. The 24 month option has an EAC of $(3,063,455) and the 36 month option has an EAC of $(2,491,097), making the 36-month option the obvious choice.

Being the world’s largest paper maker indicates having a larger inventory, more current assets (esp. since it owns timberland and several facilities), and higher cost of goods sold than other paper makers. The inventory for Company J (10.9) is larger than the inventory for Company I (8.8); the current assets for Company J (32.6) are higher than that for Company I (27.2); and the cost of goods sold for Company J (82.9) is higher than that for Company I (75.3). We also expect that, as the world’s largest paper maker, their products will move on the marketplace better than a smaller producer of

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.