Why Npv Is the Best Method for Project Appraisal

A rational capital budgeting functionality should answer two major questions. First is that, whether one particular project is a good one? Second, if we get more than one available project opportunities, but we should choose only one of them, which one should be that “one”? In real life we very frequently come across with question like whether to pick up a lump some payment of retirement account accumulated during years or receiving monthly retirement pensions until the rest of our life. In this case, NPV is the most appropriate answer out of two or three most widely used techniques in capital decision making. While doing so we also should keep in mind two major features of NPV: 1) in monetary terms, NPV is the difference between today’s market value of the investment and its original cost. 2) a financial manager should always act on behalf of the interests of shareholders through distinguishing and picking up projects with positive NPV, since it’s very clear that the ultimate target of any investment is the maximization of owners’ wealth.
Another major characteristic of NPV is that they cannot be straightforwardly originated in the market, so they need to be estimated. Since there’s always the possibility of a poor estimation, financial managers need to use a number of other criterions for project evaluation for additional information regarding whether or not an investment has a positive NPV indeed. (fundamentals corporate finance)
Internal rate of return and payback period are the major evaluation tools used by supervisors as an alternative to NPV. It might be feasible to use mentioned methods during evaluation process as well, however each of these methods has very significant shortcomings. For example: Major drawback of IRR is that it states the result in terms of percentage rather than through monetary amounts (variances in scale). Comparison through only percentage results while considering the overall purpose of maximization of shareholders’ wealth can be