Residual Income
To avoid managers using ROI to turn down investments that are profitable for the company but that lower a division’s ROI, some companies have adopted an alternative performance measure known as residual income. Residual income is the difference between operating income and the minimum dollar return required on a company’s operating assets:
Residual income = Operating income – (Minimum rate of return ×Operating assets)
Cornerstone 10-2 shows the how and why of calculating residual income.
Cornerstone 10-2 shows that the residual incomes of the two divisions are different, even though their ROIs are the same. Clearly, Multidiv earns more form the larger Appliance Division than it does from the Snack Foods Division.