Corporate Finance and Its Characteristics

A field of finance that deals with financial decisions which are done by business enterprises is known as corporate finance. It will also involve the tools and the analysis that is used to make these decisions. Corporate finance has many different aspects and goals. One of the main goals of this type of finance is to make sure that the corporate value is maximized and at the same time make sure the financial risks of the same firm are well managed. The investment decision is one of the determinants of success and failure of successful corporate finance. Investments decision is mainly done using project valuation, flexibility valuation and quantifying uncertainty.

Project valuation will depend with a firm’s method of valuation. In most cases the system that is used is a DCF (Discounted Cash Flow) valuation method. The area that has the highest value is selected as long as the value has been evaluated by the resulting NPV (Net Present Value). To achieve such a situation, one will need to estimate the timing and size of any cash flows that are incremental. The increments should be a result of the project and no other outside factors. Cash flows are further discounted to get the present value after which they are summed. The net that is gotten from the initial investment outlay is termed as the NPV. There are many factors that will affect the NPV and they will vary with the project and other factors.

Valuing flexibility is the next step in corporate finance. When you are valuing flexibility, there are some things that should be kept into consideration. Flexibility in a project is the ability of the project changing how it has been planned. In the financial world, this change can be an increase or decrease of the required income. This means that flexibility can have a negative or positive impact. To prevent a negative impact on flexibility, valuation of the same should be done. Valuation is done by looking at any variables and probability of the requirements.  More complex method of analyzing flexibility is through the use of DTA (Data Tree Analysis) and ROA (Real Option Analysis).

The last part of corporate finance is quantifying uncertainty. Uncertainty is the risk that is gotten by unknowns in a project. This can be through unpredictable circumstances.  There are several formulas which are used to quantify uncertainty. The project will determine the type of formula which will be used.





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