see my new post in this thread ..
made a mess of the separators, but you should be able to work it out :)


keepITcool

< email : keepitcool chello nl (with @ and .)
< homepage: http://members.chello.nl/keepitcool


"Stuart" wrote:

keepITcool,

Yes, the dividends are periodic, so you are right I can
use IRR in place of XIRR.

For the purposes of this exercise, the original (i.e.
before the constant is added to the dividends) IRR returns
are in the range 4.6% - 9.5%, and thus in order to achieve
the target of 17.5% (for each of them), the dividends will
ALWAYS need to increase.

Thus the "constant" value that is added to each dividend
will always be greater than zero, and hence there is no
need to include a check for whether the dividend becomes
negative.

Hope this helps.

Stuart.