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It depends. ROI is often treated as a simple accounting measure independent of the time value of money (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp). By that definition, you just sum all of the cash inflows, deduct you're your outflows and the cost of your investment and divide by the cost of the investment.

A more interesting case is the IRR (internal rate of return). A single formula won't work. The general rule is to discount each period's cash flow. Sometimes people say ROI but mean IRR.

Say you expect to earn $1,000,000 at the end of year one and $10,000,000 at the end of year 20 on a $5,000,000 investment at the beginning of year one. Guess a rate of 5% as the IRR.

The net present value of the cash flows would be (using the Excel operator ^ to denote "to the power of"):

-$5,000,000 + $1,000,000/(1+5%)^1 + $10,000,000/(1+5%)^20 = -278,724

You have a negative balance, so try a slightly lower rate so the future purchasing power isn't eroded so much. If set up on Excel, you can easily point to a cell with your current guess.

The sum of the net present cash flows should equal zero if you have the right guess. It turns out that 4.63% is a close approximation for this stream of cash flows. At this rate, you would be indifferent in 20 years if you invested the $5,000,000 in a deposit account paying 4.63% interest and this investment (assuming you reinvest all earnings). You would have roughly $12,363,000 either way.

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Q: How do you calculate return on investment with uneven cash flows?
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