PART A.

You have to analyse Grand Plomp Ltd, a maker of rocket widgets used by NASA.The owners are wondering whether the return received is sufficient to justify the risks taken in every division. You are to consider both divisional return and risk in your analysis and the subsequent information has been collected from the past fifteen years to use in your n your analysis.

• Average annual market return: 12 per cent
• Average annual risk-free rate: 8 per cent

Using standard deviation and beta calculates of risk, you are to rank projects in terms of their risk-adjusted return. Those divisions providing the lowest risk per unit of return could be preferred. An analysis will be conducted using a 'total' definition of risk, or standard deviation, and an 'undiversifiable' definition or risk, or beta.

Given the beta, it is possible to calculate the required rate of return. Furthermore, given the proportion of each division within Global Gears, it is possible to determine the firm beta, return and risk-adjusted return. With this information, it is possible to calculate whether Global Gears, as a whole, gives a sufficient return to justify the risks taken by its investors.

You are required to:

• Locate the relevant information
• Select the proper tool or equation
• Organise and manipulate the data
• Explain the solution

PART B

Misty Ltd wishes to evaluate its weighted marginal cost of capital. In preparing for this task, it has compiled the subsequent data:

a) Evaluate the breaking points and ranges of total financing associated witheach source of capital;           

b) Using the data developed determine the levels of total financing at whichthe firm's weighted average cost of capital (WACC) will change; 

c) Determine the weighted marginal cost (WMCC)  and the weighted average cost of capital for each range of total financing

d) Using the results along with the information on the available investment opportunities shown below, compile the firm's investment opportunities schedule (IOS), show this schedule and plot the weighted marginal cost of capital schedule

e) Which, if any of the available investments would you recommend that the firm accept? Illustrate your answer.

PART C.

Traditional project evaluation/capital budgeting analysis consider a firm's only choice is accept or reject a program. In a real business situation, firms face several choices with respect to how to operate a project, both before it starts and after it is underway. Any time a firm has the ability to make selections, there is value added to the project in question - Traditional NPV analysis ignores this value. The study of real options attempts to put a dollar value on the ability to make choices.

a) What are real options and how are they valued.

b) Discuss the following

IRREVERSIBILITY, UNCERTAINTY, AND INVESTMENT

(Robert S Pindyck - Massachusetts Institute of Technology March - 1990 - old but gold)

Most major investment expenditures have two important characteristics which together can dramatically affect the decision to invest. First, the expenditures are largely irreversible; the firm cannot disinvest, so the expenditures must be viewed as sunk costs. Second, the investments can be delayed, giving the firm an opportunity to wait for new information about prices, costs, and other market conditions before it commits resources.

c) Evaluate the following

Pindyck supplies a simple two-period example to illustrate how irreversibility can affect an investment decision and how option pricing methods can be used to value a firm's investment opportunity, and determine whether or not the firm should invest.

Using the following example replicate Pyndick's two-period example.

Consider a firm's decision to irreversibly invest in awidget factory. The factory can be built instantly, at a cost of $7m, and willproduce 1000 widgets per year forever, with zero operating cost. Currentlythe price of widgets is $700, but next year the price will change. Withprobability .6it will rise to $800, and with probability (l-q) it willfall to $600. The price will then remain at this new level forever. Assume that this risk is fully diversifiable, so thatthe firm can discount future cash flows using the risk-free rate, which wewill take to be 10 percent.