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Briefly describes the nature and importance of capital investments and why managers of all functional areas should understand the basics of analysis. Reviews conceptual issues. Develops important perspectives for corporate leaders, managers and analysts. Provides practical guidelines for analysis. Furnishes a useful format for analysis easily adaptable to spreadsheet analysis. Illustrates techniques of analysis using a sample capital project. Interprets the results in a common‐sense manner and in terms of the contribution of the project to shareholder value. Addresses issues at a level appropriate for each professional manager regardless of their area of expertise and functional assignment.

A development project is characterised by many periods of negative cash flows followed by a relatively smaller number of cash surplus periods. Thus, because of the time value of money, a major risk in real estate development arises from events which extend the periods between the negative and positive cash flows. This paper reviews the traditional methods of evaluating development projects in this context and suggests that more detailed cash flow techniques should be adopted to allow greater flexibility in appraisals, thus accounting for changes in circumstances through sensitivity and scenario analysis. However, even where such techniques are used, developments should not be viewed in isolation and consideration must also be given to the feasibility of a scheme in a corporate framework.

Sees the objective of teaching financial management to be to help managers and potential managers to make sensible investment and financing decisions. Acknowledges that financial theory teaches that investment and financing decisions should be based on cash flow and risk. Provides information on payback period; return on capital employed, earnings per share effect, working capital, profit planning, standard costing, financial statement planning and ratio analysis. Seeks to combine the practical rules of thumb of the traditionalists with the ideas of the financial theorists to form a balanced approach to practical financial management for MBA students, financial managers and undergraduates.

The unit trust industry is one of the fastest growing areas in the financial sector. This dramatic growth has raised concern about the level of investors’ knowledge, or lack thereof, relating to the factors associated with investment decisions. This study investigates the factors and dynamics behind cash flows into and from General Equity unit trusts from September 1996 to September 2001, and the extent to which market factors and unit trust characteristics explain the variation in cash flows. The analysis shows a significant positive relationship between cash flows and contemporaneous returns of the General Equity unit trusts and the equity market, while being negatively related to one‐month lagged returns and cash flows. Several of the determinants, including interest rates, fee structures, risk and fund size, are found to be insignificant at a 5% level. The results indicate that investors exhibit an element of profit maximisation, driven by performances and irrationality, in that they give less consideration to fee structures, risk and fund size.

The Australian Institute of Valuers and Land Economists Incorporated introduced a mandatory discounted cash flow practice standard on 1 September 1996. Reviews the new standard, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses. Offers early constructive commentary for the refinement of the standard at its 12‐month review. As no such mandatory “practice standard” has yet emerged from the US Appraisal Institute or the UK Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, it is reasonable to assume that these bodies as well as their membership will view the Australian initiative with interest.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess the extent of occurrence and impact of risk factors responsible for the variation between the forecast and actual construction cash flow.

The study was conducted through a structured questionnaire administered to UK contracting organizations. Adopting a project‐by‐project approach, respondents were asked to provide opinions on the extent of occurrence of some identified risk factors and their impacts on cash flow forecast. Respondents were split into three groups of small, medium and large contracting firms based on their annual turnover so as to be able to investigate statistical differences of opinions between the groups. Statistical analyses were carried out using mean response analysis and univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) in order to determine significant risk factors and also to investigate differences of opinions between respondents' groupings.

The research identified 11 significant risk factors out of 26 research risk variables. These significant risk variables can be grouped under three generic factors of “changes in the design or specification”, “project complexity” and “natural inhibition”. The significant risk variables are those ranking high in “extent of occurrence” and with critical impacts on cash flow forecast. The research further showed that there is no statistically significant difference in the opinions of different categories of contractors regarding the extent of risk occurrence and impacts on cash flow forecast.

The research showed that the order of extent of risk occurrence is different from the order of impact in case of occurrence. This suggests that further work needs to be done to measure the impact more objectively on a ratio scale so as to provide an avenue for a more quantitative measure of risk impacts on cash flow forecast. This objective is the next focus of this study.

Based on the finding, it is evident that the knowledge of the identified significant risk factors provides invaluable information to the construction contractor as regards what risk variables to focus attention on in cash flow forecasting.

The paper makes an original contribution of exploring the extent of risk occurrence and its impact on construction cash flow forecast from an objective point of view rather that the usual subjective point of view. The epistemic nature of the investigation makes the finding of practical value to the construction contractor in cash flow forecasting.

Discounted cash flow (DCF), whether by capitalisation or by cash flow analysis, has many detractors because of a number of apparent problems such as the reinvestment assumption and the possibility of multiple rates of return. The capital recovery cum reinvestment aspects of Years' Purchase (YP) factors and DCF are discussed and it is demonstrated that Years' Purchase single rate principle is akin to Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and that Years' Purchase dual rate principle also has a DCF image known as the Modified Internal Rate of Return (MIRR). The difference between the YP models and the DCF models is to do with the level cash flows assumed in the former and the variability of the cash flows measured in the latter. MIRR was developed as an answer to the above problems and it is demonstrated in a case study in which the fallacy of the apparent problems is also demonstrated. MIRR has a place in the analysis of investment strategy, but IRR (equated yield) is shown to be satisfactory in the financial analysis and comparison of individual projects.

Provides a comprehensive, critical review of failure prediction with cash flow information since Beaver (1966); and tabulates the methods and cash flow variables used, and the results produced. Describes the literature as “inconsistent and inconclusive” and discusses possible reasons why, e.g. the measurement and diversity of cash flows, lack of model validation, multicollinearity etc. Points out the importance of cash to solvency and dividend payouts; and the limitations it places on creative accounting. Summarizes the reasons for previous inconsistencies and considers possibilities for further research.

Business failures during the economic recession of 2008‐2010 years were unusually high in the USA. The purpose of this paper is to build a new model to predict business failure, using mostly cash flow statement based measures as predictor variables and discriminant analysis technique.

The authors' data matrix consisted of 100 firms and seven predictor variables. A total of 50 “failed” firms were matched with 50 non‐failed firms according to Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code and size. Financial statement data for the year prior to failed year were pulled from COMPUSTAT database. Seven predictor variables were selected, namely Operating cash flow divided by current liabilities, Cash flow coverage of interest, Operating cash flow margin, Operating cash flow return on total assets, Earning quality, Quick ratio and Three‐year sales growth. The SPSS‐19 software was used to perform discriminant analysis (DA).

The DA model classified 83.3 percent of original grouped cases correctly. The cross‐validated approach (jackknife or leave‐one‐out method) correctly classified 79.5 percent of cases. The chi‐square test of Wilks' lambda was significant at 0.000 level which means the model as a whole performed very well in predicting business failure.

This study is unique in many respects. First, the sample companies are not industry specific. They come from more than 20 different two‐digit SIC codes, which means the authors' model is very generic in nature. Second, the seven predictor variables (financial ratios) they selected are logically justified; these are not an outcome of step‐wise procedure. Third, most of the predictor variables use operating cash flow information from the cash flow statement. Fourth, all the failed firms in the authors' test sample are from the most recent, 2008‐2010, period.

Construction projects are well known for their complexity and ambiguity. These projects carry out higher risk than traditional ones because they entail high capital outlays and intricate site conditions. Poor financial management of these projects may lead to bankruptcy; therefore, effective cash flow management is essential. Although the peculiar characteristics of construction projects, the accuracy of cash flow forecasting has been a long lasting problem. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Many unforeseen factors affect the cash flow forecasting of construction projects. Therefore, the objective of the presented research in this paper is to examine the impact of these factors on contractor's cash flow. A model has been established by integrating analytic hierarchy process and simulation to examine the impact of various factors on cash flow. Data on the selected factors have been collected through questionnaires from various agencies in North America and China.

Results show that the most significant factors are: change of progress payment, payment duration, financial position of the contractor, project delays, and poor planning. It also shows that the effect of cash inflow factors varied approximately from 9.7 to 16.3 percent with a mean value of 12.4 percent.

The implementation of the developed models are limited to few case study projects in testing the models. However, the developed models and framework are sound for future improvement. They are considered as a major step toward a broader cash flow planning.

The developed methodology and models play essential roles in decision-making process.

The developed model is expected to help contractors realistically forecast project cash flow under uncertainty. This may lead to more dependable and professional cash flow management, which might substantially reduce failures in construction business.