ACCT303Chapter21.docVIP

CHAPTER 21 CAPITAL BUDGETING AND COST ANALYSIS 21-1 No. Capital budgeting focuses on an individual investment project throughout its life, recognizing the time value of money. The life of a project is often longer than a year. Accrual accounting focuses on a particular accounting period, often a year, with an emphasis on income determination. 21-2 The five stages in capital budgeting are the following: 1. An identification stage to determine which types of capital investments are available to accomplish organization objectives and strategies. 2. An information-acquisition stage to gather data from all parts of the value chain in order to evaluate alternative capital investments. 3. A forecasting stage to project the future cash flows attributable to the various capital projects. 4. An evaluation stage where capital budgeting methods are used to choose the best alternative for the firm. 5. A financing, implementation and control stage to fund projects, get them under way and monitor their performance. 21-3 In essence, the discounted cash-flow method calculates the expected cash inflows and outflows of a project as if they occurred at a single point in time so that they can be aggregated (added, subtracted, etc.) in an appropriate way. This enables comparison with cash flows from other projects that might occur over different time periods. 21-4 No. Only quantitative outcomes are formally analyzed in capital budgeting decisions. Many effects of capital budgeting decisions, however, are difficult to quantify in financial terms. These nonfinancial or qualitative factors (for example, the number of accidents in a manufacturing plant or employee morale) are important to consider in making capital budgeting decisions. 21-5 Sensitivity analysis can be incorporated into DCF analysis by examining how the DCF of each project changes with changes in the inputs used. These could include changes in revenue assumptions, cost assumptions, tax rate assumptions, and disc