Barton PC is a small-cap computer company located in Wilson NC. The company operations officer, Nancy Simpson, is also part owner in the company. Nancy started the company in the mid-90’s as a producer of small laptop computers. Over the years, laptop computer usage has slowly declined as consumers have moved to more mobile-centric devices. To capture this growing trend, Barton PC created the Barton-1 smartphone. The phone comes in just one model and has generated excellent sales. As with all modern electronics however, technology changes rapidly and the company is concerned sales will fall as new and existing competitors enter the market. To ensure continued robust sales, Barton PC has spent $750,000 to develop a new prototype smartphone with new and enhanced features. To more fully understand the expected sales of the phone, a marketing study for $200,000 was also conducted.

Nancy estimates the new phone’s variable manufacturing cost will be $205 per unit. Fixed costs for the project are estimated to run $5.1 million per year. The estimated 5-year sales volumes for the new phone are as follows: 64,000, 106,000, 87,000, 78,000 and 54,000 per year. Based on market research, Nancy feels the phone can be sold for $485 per phone. However, Nancy also finds there will be considerable upstart costs to start production. New equipment will be purchased for $34.5 million and will be depreciated on a seven-year MACRS schedule. It is believed the market value of the equipment in 5 years will be fully depreciated.

Net working capital for the phone will be 20% of sales and will occur with timing of the cash flows each year. In this case there are no startup costs for networking capital. Changes in net working capital will thus start when sales occur in year 1. The company has a 35% corporate tax rate and a required return on capital of 12%.

To ensure the phone creates value for the company, Nancy has requested a valuation analysis for the project. Specifically, she would like to see the net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR) for the phone over the 5-year expected sales. She would also like to see how these metrics change with various unit sales scenarios or 20% less and 20% more in unit volume sales.