Abstract
Economically sustainable drone delivery requires revenues that cover operating costs and recover committed capital. This study develops a five-year investment appraisal for a university in Guangxi, China, linking receiving facilities, staffing, paid throughput, and discrete battery replacement. It compares batched flights to staffed reception, batched flights to smart lockers, and single-parcel flights to controlled building terminals. At 1200 prospective paid orders per day and CNY 4 per completed delivery, baseline net present values are CNY −0.686 million, −0.419 million, and −9.254 million, respectively. Smart lockers are the relatively preferable baseline configuration, but their negative NPV means that the project remains financially unviable. Payroll savings alone cannot close this investment gap. When replacement batteries are paid for at their cycle thresholds, lockers require at least 1360 paid completions per day against a scheduled capacity of 1440. At the original volume, a separate scenario using annual cash-flow aggregation requires an actual recurring cash reduction of approximately CNY 132,000 per year. Two-parcel direct-delivery configurations with 20, 19, and 18 aircraft all retain negative NPV. Before procurement, managers should verify sustained paid demand, executable throughput, and removable cash commitments against the recovery thresholds, then match receiving facilities and fleet size to those conditions.