Five common mistakes in capital budgeting, Finance Basics

Assignment Help:

Please list five common mistakes in capital budgeting that could either overstate or understate the value of a project.Bonus: explain the relationship between the errors above and the valuation (i.e, whether the error will cause the value to be overstated or understated.

Five common mistakes that could either overstate or understate the value of the project are as follows:

  • Growth rate of revenues - Management generally be over optimistic in predicting the revenue growth. They take high growth rate in future projections of revenue. This may lead to higher valuation of the company and hence may overstate the value of a project.
  • Growth rate of expenses - Management generally be pessimistic in predicting the expenses growth. They take low growth rate in future projections of expenses. This may lead to higher valuation of the company and hence may overstate the value of a project.
  • Not adding back depreciation to after tax revenues - Depreciation is reduced from the before tax revenues to calculate the correct tax liability. However, depreciation is not the cash outflow and people forget to add it to the after tax cash flows. This may lead to lower valuation of the company and hence may understate the value of a project.
  • Using wrong discount rate - Real cash flows should be discounted at real rate of return and nominal cash flows should be discounted at nominal rate of return. People tend to confuse the real rate of return and use nominal rate of return with real cash flows. This may lead to lowering the valuation of the company and hence may understate the value of a project.
  • Basing decisions on IRR - If projects are mutually exclusive, then they should be valued using NPV method and not IRR. In these scenarios, we will select projects giving high absolute return and not the percentage return. This may lead to choosing of wrong projects in absolute income terms.
  • Sunk costs and opportunity costs - Companies fail to ignore sunk costs and hence this may lead to lowering the valuation of the company and hence may understate the value of a project.

Related Discussions:- Five common mistakes in capital budgeting

Finance , Why do some investors prefer high-dividends paying stocks? Why ,i...

Why do some investors prefer high-dividends paying stocks? Why ,ight other investors prefer low-dividend paying stocks?

Creditors payment period ratio, Creditors Payment Period Ratio Credit...

Creditors Payment Period Ratio Creditors payment period =   365/ Creditors turnover                                           = (365 x Average creditors)/Annual credit pu

Limitations of middle asia stock exchange index, Limitations of Middle Asia...

Limitations of Middle Asia Stock Exchange Index 1. The twenty (20) company's sample whose share prices are utilized to calculate the index are not true representatives. 2.

Investment options - bond yields, John has just inherited $50,000 from his ...

John has just inherited $50,000 from his Uncle Ted. John is currently studying his Bachelor of Accounting degree at CQUniversity part-time and has three (3) years of study remainin

Agency theory, Agency Theory An agency relationship arises whether on...

Agency Theory An agency relationship arises whether one or more parties identified the principal contracts or hires another identified an agent to perform on his behalf some

Healthcare Finance, If Metropolis Healthcare Systems have 1,150,000 in cash...

If Metropolis Healthcare Systems have 1,150,000 in cash. How long will it take them to accumulate 2,000,000 in cash? Assume an interest rate of 5%..

Write Your Message!

Captcha
Free Assignment Quote

Assured A++ Grade

Get guaranteed satisfaction & time on delivery in every assignment order you paid with us! We ensure premium quality solution document along with free turntin report!

All rights reserved! Copyrights ©2019-2020 ExpertsMind IT Educational Pvt Ltd