Priced In
Meridian Harbor LogisticsFictional companyAs of 2026-02-28Engine priced-in-engine/1.0.0
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Step five

What would the AI initiative have to deliver?

One initiative, so nothing gets counted twice. Capacity created, savings actually realized, the cost of getting there and the timing of each are kept apart, because collapsing them is how AI business cases go wrong.

Spend before year one

Subtracted once, undiscounted, at time zero. It is not repeated in year one; year-one costs go in the table below.

USD millions
USD millions

Yearly inputs

Currency in USD millions; fractions in percent, constrained to 0–100.

InputYear 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Year 5
Eligible labour cost base
Caps how much labour saving is even possible.
Adoption
Gross effort reduction
Review and rework cost
Realizable fraction of net capacity
Incremental revenue
Contribution margin on that revenue
Cannibalized revenue
Cannibalized contribution margin
AI operating expense
Implementation operating expense
AI capex
Related D&A
Incremental operating NWC (level)
End-of-year level. The model uses the year-on-year change.

Benefit after year five

Persistence policy

The persistent policy grows year-five incremental NOPAT at 2.0% and reinvests at a 12.0% terminal ROIC. It is a disclosed policy choice, not a company disclosure.

Incremental economics

Realized benefit = (eligible labour × adoption × effort reduction − review and rework) × realizable fraction. Nothing is clamped at zero.
YearGross capacityNet capacityRealized benefitIncremental EBITBaseline cash taxScenario cash taxIncremental taxIncremental FCFFDiscounted
Time zero-$10.0m-$10.0m
1$5.0m$2.2m$1.3m-$6.9m$41.7m$40.0m-$1.7m-$5.9m-$5.5m
2$11.9m$9.0m$5.4m-$1.1m$45.3m$45.0m-$0.3m-$0.8m-$0.7m
3$18.0m$14.9m$9.0m$5.7m$49.1m$50.5m$1.4m$5.2m$4.0m
4$21.9m$18.6m$11.2m$10.7m$53.1m$55.8m$2.7m$9.2m$6.6m
5$24.5m$21.1m$12.6m$12.5m$57.5m$60.6m$3.1m$10.7m$7.1m

Finite-horizon incremental NPV

$1.6m

Five years, discounted at 8.5%

Incremental enterprise value

$1.6m

Under the none persistence policy

Share of the value gap it closes

0.6%

Gap to close $247.9m

  • Default policy: no initiative benefit is valued after year five.
  • Incremental tax is scenario cash tax minus baseline cash tax at the whole-company level, so a loss-making year cannot manufacture a tax shield.
  • These are your estimates. Nothing here implies the company has disclosed or endorsed them.

Solve

What must AI deliver?

Holds every other input fixed and solves for one declared unknown: the same realized labour benefit in each forecast year. The answer is bounded by the eligible labour cost base.

Narrative evidence

P1, not built

Structured extraction of AI claims from reports and earnings-call transcripts is a later release. It is not implemented here, and no claim objects are generated. Statements can be consistent with a claim without showing that AI caused the change, so claims, observed results and modelled effects would stay in separate columns when that arrives.