The Phelps Toy Co. case study

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Question: The Phelps Toy Co. was considering the advisability of adding a new product to its line. Ikes Bar...

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The Phelps Toy Co. was considering the advisability of adding a new product to its line. Ikes Barnes was in charge of new product development. Since the founding of the company in 1988, he had seen sales grow from $150,000 a year to almost $40 million in 2006. Although the firm had initially started out manufacturing toy trucks, it had diversified into such items as puzzles, stuffed animals, wall posters, miniature trains, and board games. In 2000, it developed the third most popular board game for the year, based on a popular television quiz show, but the show was canceled two years later. Nevertheless, the firm learned from its lesson well and continued to produce board games related not only to quiz shows but to situations comedies and even popular detective series. However, by January of 2007, the need to generate new products was becoming evident. As can be seen in Figure 1, sales and net income were beginning to level off after the previously cited phenomenal growth. After doing a market analysis of possible products, Mr. Barnes decided that the baseball card market was a good area for potential new sales. Baseball cards were a popular product not only among youngsters but also among adults who were trying to recapture the experience of their youth. A market survey by Ikes Barnes indicated that the Topps Chewing Gum Company was the largest competitor in the industry. The company actually had a public distribution of its common stock in 2001. Other major sellers in 20074 were Upper Deck, Fleer, leaf and Donruss. All produce millions of baseball cards on an annual basis. The cards can be purchased in packs of 15-20 cards for $1.00-$3.00 at drug or convenience stores* or in boxes of 700-800 cards for $20 and up. These larger quantities of cards were usually purchased from sport card specialty stores or at baseball card conventions (over 1,000 such conventions throughout the country took place a year). In doing his analysis, Mr. Barnes discovered that the appeal of baseball cards was not only in opening a wrapper and finding a favorite player enclosed but also that many baseball cards initially purchased for pennies had gained substantially in value. Once a player achieved star status, his rookie card (first issued) might greatly increase in worth.

[* Some packs are more expensive than others due to quality and buyer preference.]

Figure 1

Phelps Toy Company

Year	Sales	Net Income
1988	$ 150,000	$ (16,000)
1989	240,000	(5,000)
1990	756,000	72,000
1991	1,340,000	91,000
1992	2,680,000	175,000
1993	3,320,000	198,000
1994	5,580,000	248,000
1995	6,792,000	387,000
1996	5,941,000	291,000
1997	9,237,000	439,000
1998	11,622,000	566,000
1999	12,140,000	621,000
2000	$ 17,165,000	850,000
2001	$ 22,838,000	1,221,000
2002	$ 27,762,000	1,437,000
2003	$ 32,437,000	1,628,000
2004	$ 38,911,000	1,762,000
2005	$ 39,750,000	2,002,000
2006	$ 39,860,000	1,950,000

For example, the 1968 rookie card of Nolan Ryan was selling for $2000 in early 2007. The 1963 Pete Rose rookie card was valued at $500 and finally, the first Topps card of Mickey Mantle issued in 1952 at 1 cent carried a value of 430,000 four decades later. While the card manufacturer did not directly participate in this price appreciation, the hope for such gains in the future keeps youngsters and adults continually active in buying cards as they come out. To convince management that the manufacturing and selling of baseball cards was a suitable activity for his firm, Mr. Barnes had to make a thorough capital budgeting analysis for the executive committee of Phelps Toy Co. The Analysis In evaluating the market potential, Mr. Barnes determined that there was no way he could firmly predict the market penetration potential for a new set of baseball cards. The Sales for the set, which would be called Baseball Stars, would depend on the quality of the final product as well as the effectiveness of the promotional activities. There is also the danger of a number of errors when a set is initially issued. With approximately 750 cards in the set, there is a possibility of misquoting batting averages, misspelling names and so on. When Fleer and Donruss introduced their new sets in 1995, they were highly criticized by collectors for the numerous errors. Mr. Barnes hoped to avoid this fate for the Baseball Stars set by making heavy expenditures on quality control. He also intended to hire a number of employees from other card companies so he would have experienced people who could identify potential problems at a very early stage. Over the years, Phelps Toy Co. had developed a manual to evaluate capital budgeting projects. As a first step, Ikes Barnes was required to predict anticipated sales over the next six years. While he thought this was too short a time period to evaluate the full potential of the project, he knew he had no choice but to go along with company policy. He decided to project a range for potential sales in 2008 (the first year of business) and assign probabilities to the outcomes. The information is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Projected first year sales Assumption

Assumption	Sales	Probability
Pessimistic	1,100,000	0.25
Normal	2,000,000	0.4
Optimistic	3,750,000	0.2
Highly optimistic	4,500,000	0.15
		1

It was his intention to determine the expected value for sales for the first year and then project 20 percent growth rate for the next three years and 10 percent for the final two years. Operating expenses, which were expected to average 70 percent of sales, would then be subtracted to determine earnings before depreciation and taxes. The primary investment to be made was in printing and production equipment, which would fall info the five-year MACRS depreciation category. The equipment, which represents the investment for the project, costs $2.8 million. Mr. Barnes looked into the capital budgeting manual to determine the appropriate discount rate (as shown in Figure 3). The discount rate for the project is based on the coefficient of variation of the first years sales. One of the accounting assistants informed him that the standard deviation of the first years sales was $1,226,000. He knew he could easily determine the expected value from the data previously presented (in Figure 2). Mr. Barnes thought it was now time to call his assistants together to do the appropriate analysis.

Figure 3

Discount rate determination

Coefficient of Variation	Probability
0 - .20	8%
.21 - .40	10
.41 - .60	14
.61 - .80	16
Over .80	20

Required

1. Use the basic data in the case to put together an analysis similar to table 12.11 in the text. To determine earnings before depreciation and taxes (EBDT), subtract projected operating expenses from projected sales. Use a tax rate of 34 percent.

2. Determine the appropriate discount rate for the firm.

3. Make a decision on whether the project is feasible, based on the net present value analysis. 4. What is the drawback to using a six year time horizon for the project?