The situation described is a classic example in which real options analysis is useful
in evaluating a capital expenditure. In this situation, the purchase option of €5,000
represents the option premium of the real option and the initial investment of
€5,500,000 represents the exercise price of the option. Centralia will only exercise its
real option if the ECB decides to follow a restrictive policy that would cause the APV to be a positive $86,674. The €5,000 seems like a small amount to allow Centralia the
flexibility to postpone making a costly capital expenditure until more information is
learned. The following example explicitly values the timing option using the binomial
options pricing mode