chp 7 Flashcards
A project has an initial cost of $15,000. The future cash flows are $3,200, $6,100, -$1,100, and $18,200 for Years 1 to 4, respectively. How many IRRs will this project have?
3
The length of time required for an investment to generate cash flows sufficient to recover the initial cost of the investment is called the
payback period.
The discount rate that makes the NPV of an investment exactly equal to zero is called the
IRR
What is the primary shortcoming of the average accounting rate of return from a financial perspective?
The use of net income rather than cash flows
If the discounted payback method is preferable to the payback method, then why is the payback method ever used?
Payback is easier to compute than discounted payback.
An investment is acceptable if the profitability index of the investment is
greater than one.
A firm should accept projects with positive NPVs primarily because those projects will
create value for the firm’s current stockholders.
Analysis using the profitability index
is useful as a decision tool when investment funds are limited.
The discounted payback method
uses an arbitrary cutoff period.
All else constant, the NPV of a typical investment project increases when
the rate of return decreases.
All else equal, the payback period for a project will decrease whenever the
cash inflows are moved earlier in time.
Which methods of project analysis are most biased towards short-term projects?
Payback and discounted payback
A project with conventional cash flows has an NPV of -$500, an IRR of 9.5%, and a payback period of 4.2 years. Given this information, an analyst would be justified in concluding that
the required rate of return is greater than 9.5 percent.
The payback method
ignores the time value of money.
What is the IRR on an investment that has an initial cost of $63,100 and projected cash inflows of $18,700, $38,600, and $34,100 for Years 1 to 3, respectively?
19.10
NPV = $0 = –$63,100 + $18,700 / (1 + IRR) + $38,600 / (1 + IRR)2 + $34,100 / (1 + IRR)3
IRR = .1910 or 19.10%
A project has an initial cost of $240,000 and cash flows of $78,000, –$22,000, and $164,000 for Years 1 to 3, respectively. If the required rate of return for this investment is 17 percent, should you accept it based solely on the IRR rule? Why or why not?
You cannot apply the IRR rule in this case because there are multiple IRRs.
Since the cash flow in Year 2 is a negative value, there are multiple IRRs. Thus, the IRR rule does not apply.