Capital budgeting

As you are seeing throughout your study of finance, financial managers make decisions regarding the benefits and costs associated with an investment. An important part of decision making within a business enterprise is that which involves long-lived projects. The purpose of this module is to introduce you to the decision-making process for long-lived projects, which we refer to as capital projects. Without capital projects, which include replacement projects, new products, expansions, and acquisitions, a business enterprise will not continue to grow. The capital budgeting process requires estimating cash flows and then applying techniques that help the financial manager evaluate the benefits and costs of the investment project. In general, a company should invest in projects that enhance owners’ wealth. Therefore, the financial manager must use those techniques that will help in identifying the projects that will add value. The challenges that we face in capital budgeting are many: estimating incremental cash flows from a project, incorporating risk, and selecting among the many projects that are available. In this module, we focus on the method of estimating cash flows, techniques that we can apply to these cash flows, and how risk may be incorporated into the decision process.