Payback Period

The Payback Period (PP) is perhaps the simplest method of looking at one or more investment projects or ideas. The Payback Period method focuses on recovering the cost of investments. PP represents the amount of time that it takes for a capital budgeting project to recover its initial cost.

The Payback Period Calculation is as follows:

The Costs of Project / Investment

PP = ----------------------------------------

Annual Cash Inflows

The PP concept holds that all other things being equal, the better investment is the one with the shorter payback.

Price to Earnings ratio ( P / E ratio)

The Price to Earnings ratio (P/E ratio) is a valuation ratio of a company's current share price compared to its per-share earnings.

The P/E ratio is used for measuring market performance and can be calculated as:

P/E ratio = Market Value Per Share / Earnings Per Share

For example, a company that earned $10M last year, with a million shares outstanding, had earnings per share of $10. If that company's stock currently sells for $100 per share, it has a P/E of 10.

Net Present Value ( NPV)

The Net Present Value (NPV) of an investment (project) is the difference between the sum of the discounted cash flows, which are expected from the investment, and the amount, which is initially invested. It is a traditional valuation method (often for a project) used in the Discounted Cash Flow measurement methodology, whereby the following steps are undertaken:

1. calculation of expected free cash flows (often per per year) that result out of the investment

2. subtract /discount for the cost of capital (an interest rate to adjust for time and risk)

The intermediate result is called: Present Value.

3. subtract the initial investments

The end result is called: NPV.

Alternative Method of Calculating NPV is,

Where,

t - the time of the cash flow

r - the discount rate (the rate of return that could be earned on an investment in the financial markets with similar risk.)

C_t - the net cash flow (the amount of cash, inflow minus outflow) at time t (for educational purposes, C₀ is commonly placed to the left of the sum to emphasize its role as the initial investment.).

So NPV is an amount that expresses how much value an investment will result in. This is done by measuring all cash flows over time back towards the current point in present time.

If the NPV method results in a positive amount, the project should be undertaken.