Question
Lewis Securities Inc. has decided to acquire a new market data and quotation system for its Richmond home office. The system receives current market prices
Lewis Securities Inc. has decided to acquire a new market data and quotation system for
its Richmond home office. The system receives current market prices and other information
from several online data services and then either displays the information on a screen
or stores it for later retrieval by the firm s brokers. The system also permits customers to
call up current quotes on terminals in the lobby.
The equipment costs $1,000,000 and, if it were purchased, Lewis could obtain a term
loan for the full purchase price at a 10% interest rate. Although the equipment has a 6-
year useful life, it is classified as a special-purpose computer and therefore falls into the
MACRS 3-year class. If the system were purchased, a 4-year maintenance contract could
be obtained at a cost of $20,000 per year, payable at the beginning of each year. The
equipment would be sold after 4 years, and the best estimate of its residual value is
$200,000. However, because real-time display system technology is changing rapidly, the
actual residual value is uncertain.
As an alternative to the borrow-and-buy plan, the equipment manufacturer
informed Lewis that Consolidated Leasing would be willing to write a 4-year guideline
lease on the equipment, including maintenance, for payments of $260,000 at the
beginning of each year. Lewis s marginal federal-plus-state tax rate is 40%.
You have been asked to analyze the lease-versus-purchase decision and, in the process, to
answer the following questions.
a. (1) Who are the two parties to a lease transaction?
(2) What are the five primary types of leases, and what are their characteristics?
(3) How are leases classified for tax purposes?
(4) What effect does leasing have on a firm s balance sheet?
(5) What effect does leasing have on a firm s capital structure?
b. (1) What is the present value cost of owning the equipment? (Hint: Set up a time line
that shows the net cash flows over the period t = 0 to t = 4, and then find the PV
of these net cash flows, or the PV cost of owning.)
(2) Explain the rationale for the discount rate you used to find the PV.
c. What is Lewis s present value cost of leasing the equipment? (Hint: Again, construct a
time line.)
d. What is the net advantage to leasing (NAL)? Does your analysis indicate that Lewis
should buy or lease the equipment? Explain.
e. Now assume that the equipment s residual value could be as low as $0 or as high as
$400,000, but $200,000 is the expected value. Because the residual value is riskier than
the other relevant cash flows, this differential risk should be incorporated into the
analysis. Describe how this could be accomplished. (No calculations are necessary, but
explain how you would modify the analysis if calculations were required.) What effect
would the residual value s increased uncertainty have on Lewis s lease-versuspurchase
decision?
f. The lessee compares the cost of owning the equipment with the cost of leasing it. Now
put yourself in the lessor s shoes. In a few sentences, how should you analyze the
decision to write or not to write the lease?
g. (1) Assume that the lease payments were actually $280,000 per year, that
Consolidated Leasing is also in the 40% tax bracket, and that it also forecasts
a $200,000 residual value. Also, to furnish the maintenance support,
Consolidated would have to purchase a maintenance contract from the
manufacturer at the same $20,000 annual cost, again paid in advance.
Consolidated Leasing can obtain an expected 10% pre-tax return on
investments of similar risk. What would be Consolidated s NPV and IRR of
leasing under these conditions?
(2) What do you think the lessor s NPV would be if the lease payment were set at
$260,000 per year? (Hint: The lessor s cash flows would be a mirror image of
the lessee s cash flows.)
h. Lewis s management has been considering moving to a new downtown location, and
they are concerned that these plans may come to fruition prior to the equipment
lease s expiration. If the move occurs then Lewis would buy or lease an entirely new
set of equipment, so management would like to include a cancellation clause in the
lease contract. What effect would such a clause have on the riskiness of the lease from
Lewis s standpoint? From the lessor s standpoint? If you were the lessor, would you
insist on changing any of the other lease terms if a cancellation clause were added?
Should the cancellation clause contain provisions similar to call premiums or any
restrictive covenants and/or penalties of the type contained in bond indentures?
Explain your answer.
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