Midterm 4 Part 1 Flashcards
True or False: Number-crunching makes decisions.
FALSE
There are many factors to consider when weighing project options.
What is a quantitative analysis vs. a qualitative analysis?
Qualitative is just focusing on money and numbers, meaning that as long as the basic decision rules are met, the project should be accepted.
But Qualitative analysis shows us that there are other factors that matter (that cannot be calculated) when determining if a project should be accepted.
Examples of qualitative factors
Employment (if the project would cost people their jobs), stakeholders, ESG, public interest, etc.
What does ESG stand for?
Environmental social governance.
What is ESG?
Basically it means actions companies take to remain socially and environmentally responsible.
Examples of Quantitative factors
IRR, MIRR, Payback method, Discounted payback method, NPV, AARR, PI
What is the discounted payback method and how is it different than the regular payback method?
It’s calculated exactly the same, except that instead of just subtracting the face value of Cash Flows, you discount each cash flow back to PV and THEN subtract them from the IO.
What is the Treynor Ratio?
(Return - Risk Free Rate) /
Beta
It is basically the Sharpe ratio, but over Beta instead of Standard deviation
What is variance?
It is standard deviation but before you take the square root.
Essentially it is sigma squared. σ^2
What does AARR stand for?
Average accounting rate of return
True or False: AARR is another method similar to IRR and NPV used to determine if a project is acceptable
TRUE
What is the AARR formula?
Average net income / Average book assets
What is the AARR decision rule?
If the AARR is greater than the target ROA, accept the project
True or False: It’s important to do the number crunching in addition to qualitative analysis.
TRUE
What’s another name for qualitative analysis?
Big picture analysis
Quantitative and qualitative analysis are both part of what larger process?
Capital budgeting
Examples of different types of cash flows
- Incremental cash flows
- Incidental Cash flows
- Sunk costs
- Opportunity costs
Why is it important to determine which cash flows to attribute to a project and which to ignore?
Because they help you determine the project’s value.
What is the basic definition of incremental cash flows?
The basic cash flows that are directly tied to the project we are about to accept / reject
These cash flows would not occur otherwise.
NOTE: These are both in and out of the firm
What are three specific assets of almost any capital project?
Depreciation
Taxes
Working capital changes
Examples of things that could be considered incremental cash flows
Any additional revenue, taxes, expenses, or other costs of accepting the project
True or False: Sunk costs matter in our analysis of cash flows
False. They’re irrelevant
The net incremental cash flow equals what?
The sum of all incremental cash flows (incremental cash IN minus incremental cash OUT)
True or False: Non-incremental cash flows should be excluded
TRUE
What does it mean for a cost to be non-incremental?
It means that the company will incur that cost, whether they accept the project or not.
Why do we do capital budgeting?
Because we want to understand the overall impact of a new project on our company.
Why don’t we include non-incremental cash flows in our analysis?
Because they are irrelevant or redundant (or both).
Other than providing irrelevant information, why do we only include incremental cash flows in our analysis?
Because it prevents accountants from assigning overhead costs to the project (costs that would have been incurred regardless of accepting the project)
What are the 2 Essential Guidelines when considering which cash flows to include in analysis?
- Look at Big Picture as a CEO, not a number cruncher
- There will always be people trying to allocate cash flows (especially expenses) to your project.
What are incidental cash flows?
They are cash flows that are created by a new project, but are not explicit revenues or costs.
What is the difference between direct and incidental revenue?
Direct revenues would be the immediate sales of the product (as an example), but incidental revenues come as a result of selling the product.
Tuna Fish example: The store is selling tuna for 59 cents even though it costs them 70 cents to make. They are losing 11 cents per can of tuna, BUT, they are counting on the incidental costs of people buying tuna fish AND bread, celery, or mayo.
Cannibalism
When a product sees a decrease in sales because of the launch of a new product that was introduced by the same company.
How does cannibalism relate to incidental cost?
The sales lost by the cannibalized product should be considered incidental cash flows of the new product.
True or False: Cannibalized cash flows are always counted in incidental analysis
False.
It depends on the circumstances. Example: New Intel chips replacing the old ones. They don’t count that as money lost because no matter what they do, the sales of the old one will fall (the timing will just be different).
True or False: Cannibalized cash flows will USUALLY be counted towards your incidental analysis
True.
There are exceptions, but usually you want to include the lost sales as part of your capital budgeting decision.
What is a sunk cost?
A cost that has already been incurred and can’t be regained in the future.
It’s already in the past, you can’t change it.
Example of sunk cost
You bought a movie ticket for $10, but somebody offers you a free ticket for another movie.
If you choose to go to the $10 movie, you’re letting the sunk cost influence your decision making (which is bad). The $10 is spent, there’s nothing you can do, so you should just go to the movie that you WANT to go to.
What is the most important thing to remember about sunk costs?
THEY ARE IRRELEVANT to your decision making. What’s done is done, if the project is a waste of money, if it’s NOT going to be successful, then it’s a sunk cost and you should use your future money elsewhere.
Just think of Venture Data switching programs and then pulling out later. The money they spent was a sunk cost, but Jeff knew that any future money spent on it would be useless.
True or False: When dealing with sunk costs, all we care about is the money being spent in the future.
True, we care about future money and whether or not it’s going towards a good project or a bad project.
What is an opportunity cost?
It’s the cost of using your assets towards one project and NOT being able to use those same assets for another project.
You are giving up one benefit to get another benefit. The one you’re giving up is the opportunity cost.