As a financial analyst at Macleod International (MI) you have been asked to evaluate two capital investment alternatives submitted by the production department of the firm. Before beginning your analysis, you note that company policy has set the cost of capital at 15 percent for all proposed projects. As a small business, MI pays corporate taxes at the rate of 35 percent. The proposed capital project calls for developing new computer software to facilitate partial automation of production in Mi's plant. Alternative A has initial software development costs projected at $194,000, while Alternative B would cost $336,000. Software development costs would be capitalized and qualify for a capital cost allowance (CCA) rate of 30 percent. In addition, IT would hire a software consultant under either alternative to assist in making the decision whether to invest in the project for a fee of $17,000 and this cost would be expensed when it is incurred. To recover its costs, Mi's IT department would charge the production department for the use of computer time at the rate of $394 per hour and estimates that it would take 182 hours of computer time per year to run the new software under either alternative. MI owns all its computers and does not currently operate them at capacity. The information technology (IT) plan calls for this excess capacity to continue in the future. For security reasons, it is company policy not to rent excess computing capacity to outside users. If the new partial automation of production is put in place, expected savings in production cost (before tax) are projected as follows: Year UWN Alternative A 86,000 86,000 67,000 56,000 39,000 Alternative B 118,000 130,000 106,000 98,000 59,000 As the capital budgeting analyst, you are required to answer the following in your memo to the production department: a. Calculate the net present value of each of the alternatives. Which do you recommend? b. The CFO suspects that there is a high risk that the new technology will render the production equipment and this automation software obsolete after only three years. Which alternative would you now recommend? (Cost savings for Years 1 to 3 would remain the same and 4 & 5 would be zero) In your discussions with the CFA, the CIO and the head of the production department, you have pinpointed two key inputs to the capital budgeting decision: initial software development costs and the expected savings in production costs (before tax). By properly designing the contract for software development you are confident that initial software costs for each alternative can be kept in a range of plus or minus 15 percent of the original estimates. Savings in production costs are less certain because the software will involve new technology that has not been implemented before. An appropriate range for these costs is plus or minus 40 percent of the original estimates. C. Conduct sensitivity analysis to determine which of the two inputs has a greater effect on the choice between the two projects d. Conduct scenario analysis to assess the risks of each alternative in turn. What are your conclusions? e. Explain what your sensitivity and scenario analyses tell you about your original recommendation strongly advised to using a spreadsheet for your calculations
