One of the efficiency metrics of Financial Investment, defined as a difference between total DCF and Initial Investment :

\mbox{NPV} =  - \mbox{I}_0 + \mbox{DCF}  =  - \mbox{I}_0 + \sum_{i=1}^n \frac{\mbox{FCF}_i}{(1+r)^i} = \sum_{i=0}^n \frac{\mbox{FCF}_i}{(1+r)^i}

where

	total number of accounting periods
	running number of accounting period (usually 1 year)
	discount rate
	free cash flow generated during the -th accounting period

The main idea of NPV is that value of cash today is higher than value of cash tomorrow because immediate cash can be invested readily available investment market opportunities and start brining some profit.

NPV dictates that commercial project should not only be just profitable but instead should be on par with or more profitable than easily available investment alternatives.

The corporate investment policy usually dictates that:

Investment Projects with negative NPV should be rejected
Investment Projects with higher NPV should have a financing priority over the projects with lower NPV

See also