Concerns of the Treasury Staff
After a meeting on a matter, Frank Greystock described his dilemmas to Andrew Gowan, Who worked as an analyst on Victoria Chemical’ Treasury staff. Gowan scanned Greystock’s analysis, and pointed out:
Cash flows and discount rate need to be consistent in their assumptions about inflation. The 10% hurdle rate you’re using is a nominal target rate of return. The Treasury staff thinks this impounds a long-term inflation expectation of 3% per year. Thus, Victoria Chemicals’real (that is, zero inflation) target rate of return is 7%.
The conversation was interrupted before Greystock could gain a full understanding of Gowan’s comment. For the time begin, Greystock decided to continue to use a discount rate of 10% because it was the figure promoted in the latest edition of Victoria Chemicals’ capital-budgeting manual.
Evaluating Capital Expenditure Proposals at Victoria Chemicals
In submitting a project for senior management’s approval, the project’s initiators had to identify it belonging to one of four possible categories: (1) new product or market,(2) product or market extension, (3) engineering efficiency, or (4)safety or environment . The first three categories of proposals were subject to a system of four performance “hurdles,” of which at three had to be met for the proposal to be considered. The Merseyside project would be in the engineering-efficiency category.
1. Impact on earnings per share: For engineering-efficiency projects, the contribution to net income from contemplated projects had to be positive. This criterion was calculated as the average annual earnings per share (EPS) contribution of the project over its entire economic life, using the number of outstanding shares at the most recent fiscal year-end (FYE) as the basis for the calculation . (At FYE2007,Victoria Chemicals had 92,891,240 shares out standing.)
2. Payback: This criterion was defined as the number of year necessary for free cash flow of the project to amortize the initial project outlay completely. For engineering-efficiency projects, the maximum payback period was six years.
3. Discounted cash flow: DCF was defined as the present value of future cash flows of the project (at the hurdle rate of 10% for engineering-efficiency proposals) less the initial investment outlay. This net present value of free cash flows had to be positive.
4. Internal rate of return: IRR was defined as being the discount rate at which the present value of future free cash flows just equaled the initial outlay—in other words, the rate at which the NPV was zero. The IRR of engineering-efficiency projects had to be greater than 10%