Recent increases in gold prices have prompted Fire Goldfields, Inc. to consider reopening an inactive mine. Last year, Fire paid a team of geologists $200,000 to assess the amount of recoverable gold at the mine. The geologists estimated that 45,000 troy ounces of gold could still be recovered from the mine. The price of gold is now $800 per ounce, and hedge contracts can be used to lock in this price for up to five years. Direct excavation costs would be $5.2 million per year for five years. These expenditures would allow recovery of 5,000 ounces of gold the first year, and 10,000 ounces in each of the second through fifth years. New mining equipment with a cost of $8 million would be needed right away. The equipment could be depreciated according to the five year MACRS schedule, and would be sold at the end of year 5 for an estimated salvage value of $1.2 million. The tax rate is 21%.

The geologists report noted that Fire has sufficient furnace capacity at its platinum plant, as Fire's silver division uses only 60% of the furnace capacity. Currently, that excess capacity is used to process ore for Water Mining Inc., in exchange for a payment of $800,000 per year. The out-of-pocket cost of running the furnaces (which would be unchanged in any case) is $1.4 million per year, and processing the gold from Fire's mine would require 40% of the furnace capacity.

The discount rate is 10% per year. You can assume that Fire has several million dollars of taxable income from other profitable operations.

(a) Forecast the incremental cash flows to Fire that would result from reopening the mine, on a year-by-year basis.

(b) Compute the NPV and the IRR of the proposal to reopen the gold mine at this point in time.