Optimal exit strategies for investment projects

Abstract

We study the problem of an optimal exit strategy for an investment project which is unprofitable and for which the liquidation costs evolve stochastically. The firm has the option to keep the project going while waiting for a buyer, or liquidating the assets at immediate liquidity and termination costs. The liquidity and termination costs are governed by a mean-reverting stochastic process whereas the rate of arrival of buyers is governed by a regime-shifting Markov process. We formulate this problem as a multidimensional optimal stopping time problem with random maturity. We characterize the objective function as the unique viscosity solution of the associated system of variational Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman inequalities. We derive explicit solutions and numerical examples in the case of power and logarithmic utility functions when the liquidity premium factor follows a mean-reverting CIR process.