Decision rule Conflict.

Bob Sponge has been retained as a management consultant by Square Pants, Inc., a local specialty retailer to analyze two proposed capital investment projects, projects X and Y. Project X is a sophisticated working capital and inventory control system based upon a powerful personal computer, called a system server and PC software specifically designed for inventory processing and control in the retailing business. Project Y is a similarly sophisticated working capital and inventory control system based upon a powerful personal computer and general- purpose PC software. Each project has a cost of $10,000, and the cost of capital for both projects is 12%. The projects= expected net cash flows are as follows:

Expected Net Cash Flow

Year	Project X	Project Y
0	($10,000)	($10,000)
1	6,500	3,500
2	3,000	3,500
3	3,000	3,500
4	1,000	3,500

How might a change in the cost of capital produce a conflict between the NPV and IRR rankings of these two projects? At what values of k would this conflict exist? (Hint: Plot the NPV profiles for each project to find the crossover discount rate k.)