Business Financing: Maximizing Shareholder Benefits And Investment Appraising Methods

Importance of Efficient Funds Management

Question:

Discuss about the Evaluating Capacity of Standard Investment Appraisal Methods.

The business financing is a topic where the shareholder’s benefit is observed by maximising their wealth and also different Stakeholders are kept in mind while creation of funds. The investors are very much interested in the future earnings which can be achieved (Baxamusa, Mohanty and Rao, 2015). The investment appraising methods have come up to assess the managers in decision making and assessing the impacts of the potential investments. 

The finance is a system where businesses help with getting out its activities. It is necessary for both the new businesses as well as the existing businesses to carry out their business activities and support their operations. The business success is dependent on the usage of various tools linked with money such as when chatting from my credit score well debs.

 It is important that money is used in an efficient manner and the managers have to see how the funds can be generated effectively (Serguieva and Hunter, 2004). The money can be generated by the businesses through sales of their shares. Subsequent to that, the business works on acquiring more funds from its activities therefore it is significant that management decides about the spending off the money acquired.

The current organisations carry out their businesses in all segments in all sizes relying on the decisions of financing the operations. There are different options available with the business for funding.  Business financing is all related to making the decisions regarding what kind of investments that have to be made by the business and the best way is to finance these investments. Businesses usually make investment to words the real assets such as the buildings, plant and machinery, inventories, land, etc., even though they also make investments to words financial assets. The financial assets include buying of shares, other businesses, loan investments et cetera. There are individuals hired for managing these investments and carry out all the things which are essential for creating and selling the goods and services in which the business is involved (Kare and Herbst, 2014).  So it is important for the business to decide about the kind, quantity of the fund to be raised and the selection of investment to be done. The business finance studies the way these financial and investment decisions have to be created theoretically and how they are implemented practically.

Different methods can be utilised for investment appraisal. Out of these methods the net present value is vital method. It analyses the difference amount going flows and outflows of cash at the given point of time. The positive values show great outcomes however the other investments also need to be compared along with them. The finance and money linked assessments have been largely used as benchmarks for assessing other businesses performance. The monetary targets and assessments are and reviews are based on benchmarking as per the "most excellent in the industry" (Savvides, n.d.).   This is the assessment of business performance and also tells how business has been utilising its financial resources and its capability of making further investments. It recognises the availability of net cash and improvements in the working capital that can be useful for the business. This methodology can be used by the firm when they find that a large amount of capital can be utilised in near future or if they expect that their realised projects are getting completed. This method has funding to be limited to the most suitable structure of capital that means the level at which the businesses cost of capital will be minimised. 

Available Options for Business Financing

This method is based on the discounted cash flow assessment. In this method the present value of every cash flow is discounted at the ventures cost of capital. There is an assumption mean that the cost of capital is already amended as per the risk. To carry out the net present value there is a need for summing up of each of the discounted cash flows.  The business can see that amount achieve is the amount which would be generated by the project once the cost has been paid off and the needed return of capital has also been paid off. 

 For making decisions regarding the net present value, if the project is independent then the project has to be accepted till the time the net present value is positive (Lumby and Jones, 2001). In case there are mutually dependent projects then the management has to make a choice among the projects and settle on the one which has the maximum net present value. 

There are various projects also related with this appraisal method because its key weakness is that the dimensional or level or size of the product is not evaluated and it only considers the amount of returns. Taking an example, NPV which is equivalent to  hundred pounds is high for any project which also costs hundred pounds however if any project is costing around £1 million then this hundred pound would not be sufficient. 

 The major benefit of this method is that it is a straightforward assessment of the pounds which can be gained from the project and there is clear-cut indication of what the shareholder can expect (Ro?hrich, 2014). This assessment is commonly used and keeps in mind the risk involved in the project by evaluation of the cost of capital. It also keeps in mind that time value of funds for the project therefore it is taken as one of the most suitable methods of appraisal. The capital budgeting decisions based on this method are usually the conceptually right ones

This is a simple kind of assessment for calculating the rate of return from the project. This can be assessed by dividing the mean value of revenues by mean value of the total investments. While assessing the ARR, the revenues have to be utilised and it has to be compare with the initial amount invested are expected amount of initial investment needed for the project. The selected projects are usually the ones which have the capability of a doing a superior rate of return to other ones.  It is a technique where no discounted capital investment is considered because the time value of funds is not included. Usually the concept of this present method is applicable in any department or region where the management wants to choose out of range of projects. It is also useful for comparing the performance of different projects and subsidiaries in a business. There are a few limitations with this practice also however the major limitation is that it is excessively simple technique. This assessment method can be very less utilised by investors because investors feel cash flows are very significant however the non-cash charges are also included like amortisation charges, depreciation charges. It doesn't link with the reality that higher risk is there in making long run forecasting.  It feels to keep in mind that time value of the finances and therefore many times this method is considered to be a flawed one. There have been cases when the outcomes attain from this method were different from other appraisal methods which had given correct outcome. Ultimately the highly beneficial aspect of this strategy is that it is excessively simple to estimate, simple to understand and also very quick to calculate.  When lower risk is involved, it can be utilised to save time and energy.

Theoretical and Practical Approaches in Financial and Investment Decisions

This method finds out the number of years which will be involved for recovering the primary cost of investing. There are cumulative net cash flows forecasted which are the basis for calculating the payback period.  This method is used by management by finding out the smallest payback period. Whenever there is a dilemma of accepting any of the projects, the business managers have to initially find out the benchmark payback period. In case the payback period is lower than this benchmarking then the finance manager can go ahead and give acceptance to the project (McCormick, Shuttleworth and Chen, 2006). However in case this paying back period is more than the benchmarking then there has to be rejection given to that project. This investment appraisal method also has a major limitation that it also does not consider the time value of cash. Once the payback period is asserting after that the cash flow is ignored therefore the salvage value is also a good mood. The major advantage of this appraisal method is that it is effective in calculating the liquidity and risk of the project. They ministers can use this as a way of getting additional prospective to find out how soon they can recover the initial investments they have made.

This appraisal method is the rate of discount which provides with a worth of zero to NPV. Out of the entire set of capital investment appraisal methods, IRR is usually seen as way to assess the effectiveness of the capital venture. So in case the capital investment in business is computed as more than the IRR value, the venture is extremely possible to be discarded. A lesser cost of capital has extra likelihood of being allowed.

There are different methods used like modified internal rate of return (MIRR), APV (Adjusted Present Value), profitability indexing, Equivalent accounting etc. MIRR doesn't actually provide with the yearly profitability of the invested capital because it doesn't keep in mind the intermediate tree flow of cash which is by no means reinvested equal to the internal rate of return of the project (Mekonnen Akalu, n.d.). So the internal rate of return a present method is also not very efficient because the real rate of return will definitely be lesser. This kind of limitation is undertaken by a better technique known as MIRR.

Conclusion

Each of the above stated capital investment appraisal methods are applied to rank the projects. Generally, firms have lots of projects that are appraised at the same time for making finance decisions. As the initial appraisal of a project is finished, it is evaluated and ranked in opposition to remaining projects. The projects under review are ranked as of having more Profitability index to least of it. The superior ranked projects are generally executed subsequent to cautious and comprehensive due diligence.

References

Baxamusa, M., Mohanty, S. and Rao, R. (2015). Information Asymmetry about Investment Risk and Financing Choice. Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, 42(7-8), pp.947-964.

Kare, D. and Herbst, A. (2014). Determination of the maximum investment in a capital project. Project Appraisal, 10(4), pp.261-265.

Lumby, S. and Jones, C. (2001). Fundamentals of investment appraisal. 1st ed. London: Thomson Learning.

McCormick, R., Shuttleworth, J. and Chen, S. (2006). Environmental assessment of Canadian trade and investment negotiations. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 24(4), pp.317-324.

Mekonnen Akalu, M. (n.d.). Evaluating the Capacity of Standard Investment Appraisal Methods: Evidence from the Practice. SSRN Electronic Journal.

Ro?hrich, M. (2014). Fundamentals of investment appraisal. 1st ed. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

Savvides, S. (n.d.). Risk Analysis in Investment Appraisal. SSRN Electronic Journal.

Serguieva, A. and Hunter, J. (2004). Fuzzy interval methods in investment risk appraisal. Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 142(3), pp.443-466.