Real options as a support of the investment managerial decisions

An effective management is the only way to a successful fulfilment of company's top objectives. The management can be effective only if has got in a hand' appropriate instruments. Current approaches do not always constitute optimal instruments for evaluation of investment projects or determination of a company's value. As they stay, these approaches are based on discounted cash flows which give estimated gains in the case of a realization of a particular project. In addition, they can be extended with i.e. the sensitivity analysis so that they reflect also random internal or external variations of the company. However, what the current approaches do not take into account at all are options of the managerial flexibility - that means to work out and eventually to perform the project's expansion, shut down or hold up with a choice to start it up again in the case of a positive progress. Such a chance, which is represented by the theory of real options, seems to be very helpful and effective on the way to a successful fulfilment of company's top objectives - for example by the evaluation of a project or by ensuring a competitive advantage in the market. The methodology of real options does not compensate for the standard techniques of investment evaluation, but rather presents a significant (and often necessary) supporting method for them. This is in particular true in cases when managers have to make decisions about large investments under high level of uncertainty and volatility - it opens a large field for managerial flexibility which should be effectively examined. Other examples are those cases in which the net present value was shown as problematic for such investments, which could have been effective but because of higher risk and higher discount rates were declined. In such cases, the standard techniques are in a conflict with the real options methodology which says that the uncertainty and the time factor increase the value of a project. However, the uncertainty and the managerial flexibility are exactly the factors that ban make an average company to be a top one. This paper presents new findings in the area of the value assessment which can be subsequently implemented for a better choice of the optimal strategy in the company's decision-making process. An application of the binomial model and an option thinking methodology by managerial strategy decisions are shown. The paper illustrates and summarises the steps in a real options analysis and also recapitulates the main group of real options with thein short explanations accompanied by arithmetic formulas.