• You are an external capital budgeting advisor to a highly successful manufacturing firm. You have recently received a proposal for equipment replacement that will presumably lead to more capacity and less cost. The replacement details are given below.

Old Equipment New Equipment
Current book value $ 400,000
Current market value $ 600,000 Acquisition cost $ 1,000,000
Remaining life (yrs.) 10 Life (yrs.) 10
Annual sales $ 300,000 Annual sales $ 450,000
Cash operating expenses $ 120,000 Cash operating expenses $ 150,000
Annual depreciation $ 40,000 Annual depreciation $ 100,000
Accounting salvage value $ 0 Accounting salvage value $ 0
Expected salvage value $ 100,000 Expected salvage value $ 200,000

If the new equipment replaces the old equipment, an additional investment of $80,000 in net working capital will be required. The tax rate is 30% and the required rate of return is 10%.

As you work through the NPV and IRR analysis provided by the company, you discover the following errors:

The initial outlay correctly accounts for incremental investment in new fixed capital and net working capital but after-tax cash proceeds from the sale of old fixed capital are not adjusted.

o Annual operating cashflows are not adjusted for tax and depreciation is not added back.
o Terminal-year after-tax non-operating cashflows do not recapture investment in net working capital. Also, incremental capital gains on salvage value are not taxed.

You realize that you need to do the entire project feasibility report from scratch. You set out to do the following:

(a) calculate the initial outlay, year on year after-tax operating cashflows, and terminal-year after-tax non- operating cashflow.
(b) present these cashflows in a tabular format indicating the relevant year in which these cashflows fall. You reckon the usage of a spreadsheet will be very helpful for this exercise.
(c) find out the NPV, IRR, and Profitability Index for the replacement proposal.
(d) conduct a sensitivity analysis of NPV to the required rate of return falling between the range of 10% to 16% pa (with increments of 1%). Tabulate your results. This step is required because there are some uncertainties at the top management level regarding the appropriate required rate of return to be used due to substantial decrease in risk-free rate over the years.
(e) Following the AIB Assignment Format, prepare an advisory report for the management that includes a theoretical background to the three investment decision criteria you have used for analyses, a comparison among these methodologies, a note on why these criteria are superior to Accounting Rate of Return and Payback Period used by some firms, and finally an analysis of the problem at hand and specific recommendations on the proposal, which integrates all the calculations and tabulations made in (a) to (d) above.

o This assessment is an individual assessment (ie this is not a group assessment). Please ensure you avoid collusion and other practices which compromise individual assessment work. (Refer to the Academic Integrity Policy available on AIB website)

Important Assignment Instructions

o The required word length for this assignment is 2500 words (plus or minus 10%).
o In terms of structure, presentation and style you are normally required to use:
- AIB standard report format; and
- AIB preferred Microsoft Word settings; and
- Harvard style referencing (which includes in-text citations plus a reference list).

These requirements are detailed in the AIB Style Guide.

o Reference lists for AIB assignments / projects normally contain the following number of relevant references from different sources: 6-12 (for MBA assignments).
o All references must be from credible sources such as books, industry related journals, magazines, company documents and recent academic articles.
o Your grade will be adversely affected if your assignment contains no/poor citations and/or reference list and also if your assignment word length is beyond the allowed tolerance level (see Assessment Policy available on AIB website).
o Useful resources when working on your assignments include:
- AIB Online Library
- AIB Assignment Guide
- AIB Style Guide
o Select the link for the assignment assessment criteria