Asset Growth, Abandonment Value and the Replacement Decision of Like-for-Like Capital Assets

The rapid advancement of technology leading to quicker obsolescence, shorter life cycles, and more intensive competition has resulted in renewed emphasis on the abandonment and replacement decision in the analysis of investment projects. Once an investment was undertaken, many corporations in the past often abandoned a project only when it either suddenly ceased to function, or else when it became so unprofitable that abandonment was literally forced. Several authors have demonstrated that a project could be abandoned well before any of these terminal conditions existed. Robicheck and Van Home, for instance [14], showed that an asset could be abandoned even though it may be expected to generate positive cash flows in subsequent years. Dyl and Long (DL) [6], in a modification to the Robichek and Van Home (RVH) model regarding the year of abandonment, suggested that rather than abandoning a project at the earliest time–whenever the abandonment value exceeded the present value of all subsequent future flows– all possible cases of abandonment over the life of the asset should be considered. In this manner, the procedure is to select the highest net present value of an asset over all cash flow and abandonment possibilities. This result particularly holds when all projects have the same degree of risk and when there are frictionless markets and no capital rationing.