In: Finance
The Solvents Division of the Somerset Corporation is one of many producers of a popular industrial solvent. During this past year they priced this product at $8/bottle. They arrived at this price by applying the directive from the corporate office that the Solvents Division should earn a net profit of at least $80,000 to their projection that 100,000 units would be sold during this past year. Their thinking can be summarized as follows:
Projected unit sales= 100,000
Revenue $800,000 (=$8/unit x 100,000 units)
Variable costs -300,000 (=$3/unit x 100,000 units)
Fixed costs -420,000
Net profit -20,000
The president of the Solvents Division is now making the pricing decision for the upcoming year. His current thinking can be summarized by the following quote: “This past year’s problem was that we didn’t do a good job of predicting sales. Now that we know that sales will be 80,000 units, we can price this product so we can make that $80,000 of net profit that the corporate office wants.”