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Lewis SecuritiesInc. 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 thefull 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 thebest estimate of its residual value is $200,000. However, because real-time display system technology ischanging 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.

b. (1) What is the present value cost of owning the equipment? (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? (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 that the other relevant cash flows, this differential risk shouldbe 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-versus-purchase 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?