Chapter 9 - Net Present Value and Other Investment Criteria Flashcards
What is another name for capital budgeting?
Strategic asset allocation, since there are a lot of strategic issues whose answers involve operational changes
What is the general idea of capital budgeting?
Trying to determine whether a proposed investment or project will be worth more than it costs once it is in place
What are the three criteria when evaluating each method and determining which to use?
- Does the decision rule adjust for the time value of money?
- Does the decision rule adjust for risk?
- Does the decision rule provide information on whether we are creating value for the firm?
What is the Net Present Value (NPV) of an investment?
The difference between an investment’s market value and its cost
What is the discounted cash flow (DCF) valuation?
Estimate the future cash flows, and estimate the PV of those cash flows.
Afterward, we estimate NPV as the difference between the PV of the future cash flows and the cost of investment
What is the payback?
The length of time it takes to recover our initial investment
What are the biggest issues with the payback period rule?
Coming up with the right cutoff period
We just add the future cash flows without adjusting for the time value of money so it is ignored
Dont consider profitability post payback
Who uses the payback rule?
Small businesses whose managers lack financial skills.
Also used by large and sophisticated companies when making relatively small decisions
What are the two benefits of the payback rule?
Biased towards short term projects meaning towards liquidity (good for small businesses)
Future estimations of income are uncertain so if a model for a 10 year stretch is better than that of a 3 year stretch we are not guaranteed that income in the future
What is the discounted payback period?
Length of time until the sum of the discounted cash flows equals the initial investment
*Time to break even in an economic or financial sense
What are the advantages of the discounted payback period rule?
Advantages:
1. Includes time value of money
2. Easy to understand
3. Does not accept negative estimated NPV investments
4. Biased toward liquidity
What are some of the disadvantages of the discounted payback period rule?
- May reject positive NPV investments
- Requires an arbitrary cutoff point
- Ignores cash flows beyond the cutoff date
- Biased against long-term projects, such as research and development, and new projects
What is the Average Accounting Return (AAR)?
Some measure of average accounting profit / Some measure of average accounting value
AAR = Average net income / Average book value
What are some advantages of AAR?
- Easy to calculate
- Required information is usually available
What are some disadvantages of AAR?
- Not a true rate of return
- Uses an arbitrary benchmark cutoff rate
- Based on accounting values, not cash flows or market values
What is the most important alternative to NPV (Net Present Value)?
The internal rate of return (IRR)
What is the IRR rule?
An investment is acceptable if the IRR exceeds the required return. It should be rejected otherwise
How are a bond’s YTM related to the concept of an IRR?
The YTM of a bond is that bond’s IRR