An industrial chicken farmer grows chickens for their meat. Chickens:
- Cost $0.50 each to buy as chicks. They are bought on the day they’re born, at t=0.
- Grow at a rate of $0.70 worth of meat per chicken per week for the first 6 weeks (t=0 to t=6).
- Grow at a rate of $0.40 worth of meat per chicken per week for the next 4 weeks (t=6 to t=10) since they’re older and grow more slowly.
- Feed costs are $0.30 per chicken per week for their whole life. Chicken feed is bought and fed to the chickens once per week at the beginning of the week. So the first amount of feed bought for a chicken at t=0 costs $0.30, and so on.
- Can be slaughtered (killed for their meat) and sold at no cost at the end of the week. The price received for the chicken is their total value of meat (note that the chicken grows fast then slow, see above).
The required return of the chicken farm is 0.5% given as an effective weekly rate.
Ignore taxes and the fixed costs of the factory. Ignore the chicken’s welfare and other environmental and ethical concerns.
Find the equivalent weekly cash flow of slaughtering a chicken at 6 weeks and at 10 weeks so the farmer can figure out the best time to slaughter his chickens. The choices below are given in the same order, 6 and 10 weeks.
Find Piano Bar's Cash Flow From Assets (CFFA), also known as Free Cash Flow to the Firm (FCFF), over the year ending 30th June 2013.
| Piano Bar | ||
| Income Statement for | ||
| year ending 30th June 2013 | ||
| $m | ||
| Sales | 310 | |
| COGS | 185 | |
| Operating expense | 20 | |
| Depreciation | 15 | |
| Interest expense | 10 | |
| Income before tax | 80 | |
| Tax at 30% | 24 | |
| Net income | 56 | |
| Piano Bar | ||
| Balance Sheet | ||
| as at 30th June | 2013 | 2012 |
| $m | $m | |
| Assets | ||
| Current assets | 240 | 230 |
| PPE | ||
| Cost | 420 | 400 |
| Accumul. depr. | 50 | 35 |
| Carrying amount | 370 | 365 |
| Total assets | 610 | 595 |
| Liabilities | ||
| Current liabilities | 180 | 190 |
| Non-current liabilities | 290 | 265 |
| Owners' equity | ||
| Retained earnings | 90 | 90 |
| Contributed equity | 50 | 50 |
| Total L and OE | 610 | 595 |
Note: all figures are given in millions of dollars ($m).
Question 319 foreign exchange rate, monetary policy, American and European terms
Investors expect the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to keep the policy rate steady at their next meeting.
Then unexpectedly, the RBA announce that they will increase the policy rate by 25 basis points due to fears that the economy is growing too fast and that inflation will be above their target rate of 2 to 3 per cent.
What do you expect to happen to Australia's exchange rate in the short term? The Australian dollar is likely to:
An investor owns an empty block of land that has local government approval to be developed into a petrol station, car wash or car park. The council will only allow a single development so the projects are mutually exclusive.
All of the development projects have the same risk and the required return of each is 10% pa. Each project has an immediate cost and once construction is finished in one year the land and development will be sold. The table below shows the estimated costs payable now, expected sale prices in one year and the internal rates of returns (IRR's).
| Mutually Exclusive Projects | |||
| Project | Cost now ($) |
Sale price in one year ($) |
IRR (% pa) |
| Petrol station | 9,000,000 | 11,000,000 | 22.22 |
| Car wash | 800,000 | 1,100,000 | 37.50 |
| Car park | 70,000 | 110,000 | 57.14 |
Which project should the investor accept?
Question 759 time calculation, fully amortising loan, no explanation
Five years ago you entered into a fully amortising home loan with a principal of $500,000, an interest rate of 4.5% pa compounding monthly with a term of 25 years.
Then interest rates suddenly fall to 3% pa (t=0), but you continue to pay the same monthly home loan payments as you did before. How long will it now take to pay off your home loan? Measure the time taken to pay off the home loan from the current time which is 5 years after the home loan was first entered into.
Assume that the lower interest rate was given to you immediately after the loan repayment at the end of year 5, which was the 60th payment since the loan was granted. Also assume that rates were and are expected to remain constant.
Question 792 mean and median returns, return distribution, arithmetic and geometric averages, continuously compounding rate, log-normal distribution, confidence interval
A risk manager has identified that their investment fund’s continuously compounded portfolio returns are normally distributed with a mean of 10% pa and a standard deviation of 40% pa. The fund’s portfolio is currently valued at $1 million. Assume that there is no estimation error in the above figures. To simplify your calculations, all answers below use 2.33 as an approximation for the normal inverse cumulative density function at 99%. All answers are rounded to the nearest dollar. Assume one month is 1/12 of a year. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?
Question 884 monetary policy, impossible trinity, foreign exchange rate, no explanation
According to the impossible trinity, a currency can only have two of these three desirable traits: be fixed against the USD; convertible to and from USD for traders and investors so there are open goods, services and capital markets; and allow independent monetary policy set by the country’s central bank, independent of the US central bank.
Which of the following exchange rate regimes sacrifices fixing the exchange rate to the USD? In other words, which regime uses a floating exchange rate?
Four retail business people compete in the same city. They are all exactly the same except that they have different ways of funding or leasing the shop real estate needed to run their retail business.
The two main assets that retail stores need are:
- Inventory typically worth $1 million which has a beta of 2, and;
- Shopfront real estate worth $1 million which has a beta of 1. Shops can be bought or leased.
Lease contract prices are fixed for the term of the lease and based on expectations of the future state of the economy. When leases end, a new lease contract is negotiated and the lease cost may be higher or lower depending on the state of the economy and demand and supply if the economy is:
- Booming, shop real estate is worth more and lease costs are higher.
- In recession, shop real estate is worth less and lease costs are low.
Which retail business person will have the LOWEST beta of equity (or net wealth)?