Jack Tar, CFO of Sheetbend & Halyard, Inc., opened the company confidential envelope. It contained a draft of a competitive bid for a contract to supply duffel canvas to the U.S. Navy. The cover memo from Sheetbend @s CEO asked Mr. Tar to review the bid before it was submitted. The bid and its supporting documents had been prepared by Sheetbend @s sales staff. It called for Sheetbend to supply 100.000 yards of duffel canvas per year for 5 years. The proposed selling price was fixed at $30 per yard. Mr. Tar was not usually involved in sales, but this bid was unusual in at least two respects. First. if accepted by the navy, it would commit Sheetbend to a fixed-price, long-term contract. Second, producing the duffel canvas would require aninvestment of $1.5 million to purchase machinery and to refurbish Sheetbends plant in Pleasantboro, Maine. Mr. Tar set to work and by the end of the week had collected the following facts and assumptions: @ The plant in Pleasantboro had been built in the early 1900s and is now idle. The plant was fully depreciated on Sheetbend @s books, except for the purchase cost of the land (in 1947) of $10.000. Now that the land was valuable shorefront property, Mr. Tar thought the land and the idle plant could be sold, immediately or in the near future, for $600,000. Refurbishing the plant would cost $500,000. This investment would be depreciated for tax purposes on the 10-year MACRS schedule. @ The new machinery would cost $1 million. This investment could be depreciated on the 5-year MACRS schedule. The refurbished plant and new machinery would last for many years. However, the remaining market for duffel canvas was small, and it was not clear that additional orders could be obtained once the navy contract was finished. The machinery was custom-built and could be used only for duffel canvas. Its secondhand value at the end of 5 years was probably zero. Table 904 shows the sales staffes forecasts of income from the navy contract. Mr. Tar reviewed this forecast and decided that