Capital Budgeting Report: Evaluating Investment Appraisal Techniques

This report provides an overview of capital budgeting techniques used in financial decision-making. It explores the importance of investment appraisal and discusses various methods, including Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Accounting Rate of Return (ARR), and Payback Period. The report highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each technique, emphasizing the time value of money and the importance of considering factors like risk and profitability. It concludes that comprehensive studies are essential before making financial decisions, with NPV and IRR being considered the most sound techniques due to their ability to weigh future cash flows against the initial investment, taking into account the time value of money and other relevant factors. The report emphasizes the need for senior management to consider technological, social, and other factors before finalizing investment proposals.

CAPITAL BUDGETING 1
Task 4
Introduction
The decisions with respect to the investment in the capital assets like the land, building,
equipment, machinery, and other long term assets are the chief strategic financial decisions in
an entity. These are important because of two major reasons namely the high amount of
investments and the resources involved and the fact that these decisions cannot be reversed
once taken (Jones, 2013). Therefore such proposals need to be carried out with suitable
amount of considerations with regards to the time, investment, existing capability,
technology, disposal, and other such incidental factors. The management is required to carry
out a sound technical and feasibility study to finalise the proposals (Jones, 2013). The
following segment explains the techniques that aid in the same.
Various Techniques
Net Present Value (NPV): The method considers the time value of money. The method
involves the use of the discount rate to discount the future cash flows arising out of
operations of the projects. The same are compared with the initially invested amount of
capital. The positive NPV calls for the acceptance of the proposal and vice versa. The
limitation of the method is the discounted rate of return, which is subjective in terms of the
management discretion.
Internal Rate of Return (IRR): The IRR method in close conjunction with the NPV
method. The rate is referred to as the economic rate of return earned on the capital employed
at different points of time. In simple words it is the rate at which the net present values of the
cash oputflows equlas the net cash inflows. If the rate is less than the cost of capital, the
project is rejected and vice versa. The drawback of the method is that there can exist multiple
IRRs for a same project. The technique is beneficial in case of evaluaotmg the mutually
exclusive projects.
Accounting Rate of Return (ARR): The technique is focussed on the operating profits of an
entity. The rate is computed by dividing the expected net operating incomes pof an entity by
the initial investsment put in the proposal. The rate is further compared to the pre decided
cost of capital to reject or accept the proposal. The benefit of the technique is that it considers
the actual profits of an entity while evaluatimg the proposals. The drawback can be stated to
be the failure to consider the time value of money.

CAPITAL BUDGETING 2
Pay Back Period: It refers to the period in which the initial invested amount and other
expenditures of a project would be recovered, by earning the cash flows as expected. While
comparing the two projects, the decision should be based upon the lowest payback period.
The benefit of the technique is the simplicity, the drawback is that it does not considers the
time value of money.
Conclusion
As per the discussions conducted in the previous parts it can be concluded that investment
appraisal decisions are one of the most important decisions with respect to the functioning of
the organisations. It must be noted that these decisions are based upon a number of incidental
factors such as the shareholders’ approval, associated possible risks, bad assessment of risks
by the management, rewards, technology involved, budgetary requirements and more.
Therefore the senior management must consider the technological, social and other factors
before finalising a proposal. The work described a number of techniques that can be
employed by the business to evaluate the feasibility of the projects. The NPV and IRR
methods are considered to be the soundest techniques because both of them weights the
future cash flows in comparison to the initial investment, considering the time value of
money, taxation and other important factors. Therefore it is essential that comprehensive
studies are conducted of the requirements and capabilities before arriving at these financial
decisions.

CAPITAL BUDGETING 3
References
Jones, M. (2013) Accounting. 3rd ed. UK: Wiley