Net Present Value (NPV) Calculator
Discount a series of yearly cash flows at the rate you choose and see what they are worth today: project NPV and IRR first, then an optional terminal value and per-share DCF valuation. Calculated entirely in your browser.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. No account, no uploads, no lookups: your figures stay in this tab.
Cash flows by year
Row position is the year: the first filled row is year 1. Positive = cash the project pays you, negative = extra money you put in mid-project.Discount rate
Terminal value
Everything after the forecast, compressed into one number: the last cash flow growing forever at a calm rate. Keep it at or below long-run nominal GDP growth, historically about 2 to 3%.Per-share value
All three come from the balance sheet: cash and short-term investments, short- plus long-term debt, and the diluted share count from the report cover or notes.The NPV formula
NPV = Σ CFt ÷ (1 + r)^t − C0
Every yearly cash flow CFt is divided by (1 + r) once per year of waiting, and the money spent today C0 is subtracted in full because it needs no discounting. A positive NPV means the project earns more than your rate r; a negative one means it earns less.
Where the discount rate comes from
The rate is the return you could get elsewhere for the same risk. CAPM makes it explicit: cost of equity = risk-free rate + beta × equity risk premium. A long government bond anchors the risk-free rate; beta scales how much the asset swings with the market; an equity risk premium of 4 to 6% pays you for taking that swing.
The mid-year convention
Discounting a whole year's cash flow at year-end quietly assumes it arrives in one lump on the last day. Real operations pay out through the year, so professional models discount at t − 0.5 instead. The effect is small but always points the same way: money arrives sooner, so the value is slightly higher.
The terminal value
Value after the explicit forecast uses the Gordon Growth model: TV = CFn × (1 + g) ÷ (r − g). It only exists when the perpetual growth g stays below the discount rate r. Because the formula divides by a small difference, tiny changes to either input move it enormously. In a typical DCF the terminal value is 50 to 80% of the total, which is why this page keeps showing you its share.
From enterprise value to per-share value
The forecast values the whole enterprise, which lenders partly own. Equity value = enterprise value + cash − debt. Divided by diluted shares outstanding, it becomes the per-share figure you can set against a market price.
NPV and IRR
IRR is the discount rate that makes the NPV exactly zero: the project's own implied yearly return. NPV answers "what is this worth to me at my required return"; IRR answers "what return does this earn". When the two disagree about a decision, trust NPV: IRR ignores scale and quietly assumes every cash received along the way reinvests at the IRR itself.
What a valuation can and cannot tell you
A DCF model converts assumptions into a number with great precision and no accuracy of its own: estimates in, estimate out. Four inputs carry almost all of the uncertainty, in this order.
The discount rate
The single most powerful input. Half a point off moves the value by a tenth or more, and it sits at the center of both the forecast discounting and the terminal value, so its error compounds. Anchor it to your true required return, not to the rate that makes the answer look right.
The perpetual growth rate
It appears once, at the very end, yet it shapes up to half of the answer. A move from 2.5% to 3.0% can swing the value by a quarter. Two sanity rails: g must stay below the discount rate, and over long runs no company outgrows the economy it lives in.
The cash-flow forecast itself
Year 1 is a reading; year 5 is a story. Revenue growth, margins, capital spending, and working capital all drift together, and ±10% is a kind estimate for anyone's five-year forecast. Prefer wide and honest to narrow and precise.
The forecast horizon
The years beyond three or four are where the real uncertainty hides. Whatever you cannot forecast honestly ends up in the terminal value, so a longer explicit forecast moves uncertainty around rather than removing it.
Use ranges, not points
Professional analysts never publish one number from a DCF: they publish a range from a sensitivity table and cross-check it against what the market already implies. The ranking panel next to the calculator exists so you can see, for your own inputs, which assumption deserves your research time.
This calculator is a thinking tool for your own research. It is not investment advice, and no figure it produces is a guarantee.
Frequently Asked Questions
List the yearly cash flows, choose a discount rate, and discount each flow by one (1 + r) per year of waiting: NPV = Σ CFt ÷ (1 + r)^t, minus any money spent today. A positive NPV means the project earns more than your required rate. The calculator above does this instantly and shows the discount factor of every year.
NPV = Σ CFt ÷ (1 + r)^t − C0, where CFt is the cash flow of year t, r is the discount rate per year, and C0 is the initial outlay. The same math extends to a DCF valuation: add a terminal value for everything after the explicit forecast, then bridge from enterprise value to equity value per share.
Use the yearly return you could reasonably get elsewhere for the same risk. For equity-like risk, CAPM is the standard build: risk-free rate plus beta times the equity risk premium, which lands most valuations between 8 and 12%. For a low-risk project, a long government bond yield plus a small margin is enough. The rate is an estimate of opportunity, not a fact, and it is the input worth double-checking first.
IRR is the discount rate at which the NPV becomes exactly zero, so it reads as the project's own implied yearly return. NPV prices the project in your money at your required return; IRR reports the return the project itself earns. NPV is the better decider: IRR ignores project size and assumes cash received mid-project gets reinvested at the IRR, which is rarely true.
Because it compresses every year after the forecast into one Gordon Growth number: TV = CFn × (1 + g) ÷ (r − g). The formula divides by a small difference between two similar percentages, so the number is naturally large and jumpy. In a typical DCF it is 50 to 80% of the total value. That is normal, and it is exactly why this page shows the terminal value's share and a sensitivity table next to the result.
Yes. The calculator runs entirely in your browser and this page performs no lookups at all: no rates, no server storage, nothing about your figures leaves the tab. Your entries are kept only in this browser (localStorage) so the page remembers them next visit, and Reset wipes them instantly.