The rental agreement for the greenhouse is an operating lease and essentially represents off-balance sheet financing. To adjust Landesign’s balance sheet for the operating lease, Schmidt needs to capitalize the lease by increasing both liabilities and assets by the present value of the lease payments. The interest rate used in the present value computation is the lower of the firm’s financing rate or the rate implicit in the lease. We are told that the rental payments of $55,000 are based on an interest rate of 7%. However, we are told in another footnote that Landesign expects to be able to borrow funds in the future at a rate of 6%. We therefore use the lower firm financing rate of 6% in our computation. The present value of the lease payments is: N = 8; I/Y = 6%; PMT = -55,000; FV = 0; CPT PV = $341,539. |
