Principles of Finance/Section 1/Chapter 6/Corp/Computation

IRR , computation , Newton's Method Project valuation may require finding the Internal Rate of Return, or the discount rate at which a project's present value of future cash flows equals to zero. This is the maximum rate of return achievable, and should be greater than the inflation rate. a simple converging guessing method has been illustrated under the Project Valuation chapter. The use of Newton's method was left as an exercise, and a possible solution is shown below. Newton's method finds the x-axis intersection of the gradient line found at an approximate IRR, which will give a better rate to try for IRR, and iterations will find an acceptable IRR where the NPV is small enough to be equal to zero. background for derivative function of npv: Axiom: for bxa , d ( bxa) / dx = ab xa-1 Hence, if, npv = CF0 / R0 + CF1 / R1 + .. + CFn / Rn, or npv = CF0 + CF1 x R-1 + CF2 x R-2 + .. + CFn x R-n, then , d(npv)/dR = 0 x CF0 x R -1 + - CF1x R -2 + - 2 CF2x R -3 ... + -n x CFn x R-n - 1. #copyright SJT, GNU 2014. # Newton's method # graph is y-axis NPV and x-axis is rate, so find where NPV = 0, or the project rate function crosses the x-axis. # Do this by finding where the slope line of the function curve at any given R crosses the x-axis, which gives a # better R' which is closer to where the function curve crosses the x-axis, and this is done iteratively until # a close enough R' is found where the npv is practically 0. def irr(cfs): def npv(cfs, r): R = 1. + r/100. return reduce( lambda x,(i,y): x + y * R**-i , enumerate(cfs), 0) def deriv_npv( cfs, r): R = 1. + r/ 100. return reduce ( lambda x, (i,y): x - i * y * R **(-i-1) , enumerate( cfs), 0) r = 10. lim = 0.1 # ten cents is practically zero while True: np_v = npv( cfs, r) print "np_v", np_v if abs(np_v ) < lim: break dnpv = deriv_npv( cfs, r) r = r - np_v / dnpv return r print irr( [ -30000, 3000, 4000, 16000, 15000, 5000] )