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Worldwide Paper

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Drexel University
Worldwide Paper Company
Group 2 Case Analysis
Brian Burke, John Lafferty

FIN 790 Winter 2015
Seminar in Finance
Dr. Samuel H. Szewczyk
Lebow School of Business
February 9, 2015

Executive Summary:

Blue Ridge Mill is a wood mill owned by Worldwide Paper Company and supplies wood pulp for the company for use in paper production. Blue Ridge Mill bought its wood supply from Shenandoah Mill’s excess production of shortwood that was processed from its longwood supplies. In 2006, Bob Prescott, the controller for Blue Ridge Mill, was considering a project that would give Blue Ridge Mill the capability to process longwood into shortwood, which would eliminate the need to purchase from Shenandoah Mill, as well as compete …show more content…

As a result, the cost of debt is 5.88% and is calculated as follows:

The cost of equity can be calculated by using the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). CAPM requires that a market risk free rate, the market risk premium, and the beta for the company. The market risk premium (6%) and the company beta (1.1) is given directly and can be seen in tables 2 and 3 below. Government bonds are used for the risk free rate. Since 10 year corporate bonds are used for the cost of debt, the 10 year Treasury Bond of 5.60% will be selected as the risk free rate. The 10 year bonds are also a good match for the project duration, which is between 5 and 10 years. The cost of equity of 11.20% is than calculated as follows:

With the cost of debt and the cost of equity calculated, the WACC is calculated below. The cost of debt is further discounted by one minus the tax rate since the interest paid on debt is treated as an expense prior to being taxed.

Table 2: Interest Rates December 2006

Table 3: Company Financial Information

Using the calculated WACC and the company’s hurdle rate for this project, under Bob Prescott’s cost savings and additional revenues assumption, the project’s IRR is now greater than the hurdle rate. Furthermore, the net present value (NPV), payback period and the additional value added to the earnings per share (EPS) are shown in Table 4 below. Using just these figures, the project should be accepted.

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