Payback Period

See: IRR.

You invest $5 million in a new waterslide for your theme park, The Enemizer. Traffic to the park at $20 a visit picks up 1,000 people a day for a while. Only 200 days a year are "live" for the park; 4 grand times 200, and that's $800k paid back in year one. And that's great...6 years and change to pay it all back if there was no interest attached to the $5 million.

But there is. You could have done other things with that $5 million other than put it into building The Enemizer. Let's say you could have gotten 10% a year return on it...so there's $500k a year of "payback" you need to first make to even begin paying off the principal you owe. If you include the interest, the $800k only pays down $300k a year in principal.

Lots of ways to slice and dice the payback period. The key idea: money ain't free; there are always other things you could have done with it. So you have to figure those numbers into your total.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is IRR?5 Views

00:00

Finance Allah Shmoop what is I r r This is

00:07

an ear And nope it has nothing to do with

00:10

ai r r Instead I r r stands for internal

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rate of return Yeah All right So what does that

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mean While internal rate of return sounds like something medical

00:20

right Like something in the neighborhood of colonoscopies and other

00:23

loving invasions by the dock Well you know what a

00:26

return is on an investment You invest a dollar and

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I'll say it returns ten percent a year for seven

00:31

years and changed seven point two years for the rule

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of seventy two While then it'll double I R r

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refers to the growth rate of capital invested in a

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given project Usually as it relates to a company's allocation

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of their precious cash resource is to invest for growth

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in themselves in the future I r is just about

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the compound rate of return and investor And that investor

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can be your company investing in an internal project that

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that investor needs to receive in order for the dough

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to be worth spending in the first place Think about

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it like a financial hurdle You have to jump over

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the difficult part of an IRA Our calculation revolves around

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some notional percent return that you have to have in

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order for that project to be you know worth doing

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Like why do you need a ten percent return versus

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a fifteen percent Why not twenty or thirty Well when

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you do your cash invested and cash return calculations are

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you considering the hidden values in doing this deal Like

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investing in the IMU set You know who produced colored

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eggs in hopes of igniting a new Easter fad that

01:32

enhances the brand value of your IMU Meet whether it

01:35

works or not Vegans aside like who wouldn't want blue

01:38

pink and green IMU meat So there's kind of an

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echo effect in surfacing hidden benefits that aren't necessarily part

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of the cash on cash Return calculations When companies make

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those ire our calculations for investing their precious cash well

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The hurdle rate element that companies use in Iraq calculations

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is kind of arbitrary but the discipline is good and

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pretty simple If you're investing two hundred fifty million dollars

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in a new battery plant for your drones well then

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you'd better get a lot more than two hundred fifty

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million dollars of value back from it Right So go

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back to our favorite rule of seventy two thinking here

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if you needed a twelve percent return Well it would

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say that the value of your two hundred fifty million

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dollars has to be worth at least five hundred million

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dollars to you six years later And there are likely

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foundational frames around meeting that twelve percent number Like in

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real life if you're a financial manager in a big

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fat company you're going tohave competition That is you'll have

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other players who want to invest money in their projects

02:35

over yours Like you have a drone painting a project

02:38

and you have a drone management in a drone life

02:41

insurance products and all those people want the company's cash

02:44

to build their product over yours or their project anyway

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So you'll have to demonstrate on paper to your boss's

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boss's boss that your project has ah higher I r

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r than theirs And if you're good you'll cover the

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hidden risks and strategic values as part of your pitch

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Okay here's the math So what was our IRA and

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the project We just outlined the battery plant Well we

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laid out two hundred fifty million bucks and we get

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back a lot like multiples of two hundred fifty million

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dollars There are a bunch of ways to think about

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IRA but let's figure out the years it takes to

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well first double our money and we can then get

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to the rate of return with our handy dandy rule

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of seventy two We've got back all our money in

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about three years but the gifts keep on giving It's

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not like the battery plant is useless after three years

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right Like it's saved us a lot of one hundred

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forty million in year one and then eighty and year

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to and then maybe on seventy eighty fifty some number

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in your three So we've gotten all two hundred fifty

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million dollars of value back in just three years and

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the battery plant is still functioning In fact it should

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keep dividend ing batteries for decades And with the plant

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fully paid off in just three years well everything else

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it gives back is pretty much gravy lots and lots

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of creamy electrified gravy It's a hundred fifty mil back

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to us after three years and then things continue like

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Let's say in year four we get one hundred ten

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million dollars of battery value and then one twenty in

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year five one thirty in Year six or something like

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that Adam all up and well even with our discount

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rate like valuing them for today's dollars one point one

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two to the six powers how we divide back that

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hundred thirty million years Six And that's how we do

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it That's what it looks like So how long can

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this battery plant last Maybe twenty years And what about

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the side door business of selling our battery capacity to

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others Well if we did that then wow we could

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make two hundred million dollars a year or more from

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this plant And this doesn't even count the strategic value

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of likely having bankrupted our would be editors who sell

04:32

an inferior product for almost twice the price So what

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if we wanted to just then sell the battery plant

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in some number of years Then it might go for

04:39

a billion dollars or more so than what the cash

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flows look like in our hierarchy Talc Well you got

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whatever the first three years where we got all our

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money back and change and then a few more years

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of milking and then a few more years after that

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Then we sold it for a billion dollars in your

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ten or something like that But regardless in this case

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this is a spectacularly good project We generated almost half

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a billion bucks let's say in cash along the way

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and then sold the whole plan for over a billion

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dollars At the end We'll the key element you have

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to grow up with Regard to IRA is that the

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return has to be positive for a project to be

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green lit positive meaning higher than the hurdle rate That

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is if you take into account the cost and opportunity

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cost of the capital you're deploying the risk adjusted net

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present value in the strategic hidden elements will then IRA

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has to be a positive dollar amount worth doing In

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this case we started with that twelve percent per year

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comp on return figure as our minimum bass case to

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deem a project worthy of green lighting So the new

05:36

opportunity looked a delicious WE green lit it and well

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if all goes well you'll be a swimming in colored 00:05:42.521 --> [endTime] IMU meat

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