BASICS OF CAPITAL BUDGETING You recently went to work for Allied Components Company, a supplier of auto repair parts used in the after-market with products from Daimler AG, Ford, Toyota, and other automakers. Your boss, the chief financial officer (CFO), has just handed you the estimated cash flows for two proposed projects. Project L involves adding a new item to the firm's ignition system line; it would take some time to build up the market for this product, so the cash inflows would increase over time. Project S involves an add-on to an existing line, and its cash flows would decrease over time. Both projects have 3-year lives because Allied is planning to introduce entirely new models after 3 years. Here are the projects' after-tax cash flows (in thousands of dollars): 0 2 Project L -$100 Project S -$100 1 + $10 $70 + $60 $50 3 $80 $20 Depreciation, salvage values, net operating working capital requirements, and tax effects are all included in these cash flows. The CFO also made subjective risk assessments of each project, and he concluded that both projects have risk characteristics that are similar to the firm's average project. Allied's WACC is 10%. You must determine whether one or both of the projects should be accepted. e. 1. Draw NPV profiles for Projects L and S. At what discount rate do the profiles cross? 2. Look at your NPV profile graph without referring to the actual NPVs and IRRs. Which project(s) should be accepted if they are independent? Mutually exclusive? Explain. Are your answers correct at any WACC less than 23.6%?