Return On Investment (ROI) and Its Contribution to Investment Performance

Return On Investment

When determining the profitability of an investment, organizations use the Return on Investment (ROI) formula. ROI is a performance indicator that determines the profitability of any investment (Zamfir, Manea, and Ionescu 2).

For many years, organizations have calculated the Return On Investment (ROI) before any venture in their business. Some managers critic the ROI model because it can easily be manipulated and cannot be used to compare investment projects in different economic situations (Zamfir, Manea and Ionescu 3).

Other managers and investors consider it the main factor in decision-making.  Even though some people oppose ROI because it is easy to calculate, it is a mainly used indicator of future investments and acquisition decisions. It should not be used as the only factor because it does not consider the asset’s depreciation or the time value of money.

ROI’s contribution to investment performance

Return on investment (ROI) is calculated by subtracting the profit of the investment from the cost and then dividing the cost. The result is then multiplied by 100, giving the Return On Investment (ROI) in percentage.

According to an article by Zamfir, Manea, and Ionescu (2), ROI can be used in all types of investments, before and after investing. ROI provides insight to investors on the profitability of different investments.

When it is calculated, it produces a positive or negative value. The negative value shows that the investment is unprofitable (Zamfir, Manea and Ionescu 3). ROI enables investors to decide on whether to invest in a business or not. Though the calculations do not consider inflation or investment risk, it helps calculate both long and short-term investments.

Example of calculation:

An investor invests 20,000 in a startup marketing company. After some time, the investment was 24,000. The ROI of the investment is:

ROI = [(Profit – Cost)/cost] *100

ROI = [(24,000-20,000)/20,000] * 100 = 20%

Is it acceptable to lose profit on one product if that product is vital to the sale of an extremely profitable product? 

Yes, it is okay. When using the loss leader strategy, the unprofitable product attracts new customers to the profitable product. The loss leader strategy is a pricing technique of selling a product at an unprofitable cost to attract new customers or sell more Other Financial Metrics Measures besides ROI

There are other financial metrics besides Return on Investments. They are all used to calculate total investment returns, just like ROI. The formulas of each metric are different.

There are many metrics, but we will only talk about two, Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR).

Net Present Value (NPV)

Net Present Value calculates the money value of future cash flow. NPV aids in determining the worth of investing in a project. Subtract the present value of expected cash flows from the present value of invested cash and get the NPV (Dai, Li and Wang 2).

A positive NPV indicates that the investment will be profitable. When calculating the NPV, a discount rate is needed. NPV is a useful metric compared to Return On Investment (ROI) because it considers the time value of money. It has a limitation of being unable to tell the waiting period until one makes a profit on their investment (Dai, Li and Wang 3).

Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

The IRR is also used to estimate the profitability of an investment. The higher the IRR, the better the profit. IRR is a discount rate that makes the NPV equal to 0. For example, the NPV would be negative if the IRR is 28% and the discount rate is 30% making it higher than IRR (Dai, Li and Wang).

The IRR is in percentage. The formula of IRR is subtracting the expected future value from the original value, dividing by the original value then multiplying by 100 (Dai, Li, and Wang 2). IRR does not require a discount rate to calculate, which makes it better than NPV.

When comparing investments of different sizes, IRR does not consider that factor. The factor makes it a limitation for IRR (Dai, Li, and Wang 4).

Works Cited

Ambrus, Attila and Jonathan Weinstein. “Price Dispersion and Loss Leaders.” (2004): 19. <https://scholar.harvard.edu/ambrus/files/lossleaderpostedb.pdf>.

Dai, Haotian, et al. “The Analysis of Three Main Investment Criteria: NPV.” Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research, Volume 648 (2022): 5.

Zamfir, Mariana, Marinela Daniela Manea and Luiza Ionescu. “Return On Investment – Indicator for Measuring the Profitability of Invested Capital.” Valahian Journal of Economic Sciences (2016): 8.

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