This document provides guidance on estimating the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for Harry Davis' company. It discusses:
1) Estimating the costs of different sources of capital, including debt, preferred stock, and common equity using various methods.
2) Calculating a WACC of 11.1% based on the company's current capital structure.
3) Factors that influence the WACC and why the composite WACC may not be appropriate for all projects. Procedures for adjusting the WACC for specific divisions or projects are discussed.
This document provides guidance on estimating the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for Harry Davis' company. It discusses:
1) Estimating the costs of different sources of capital, including debt, preferred stock, and common equity using various methods.
2) Calculating a WACC of 11.1% based on the company's current capital structure.
3) Factors that influence the WACC and why the composite WACC may not be appropriate for all projects. Procedures for adjusting the WACC for specific divisions or projects are discussed.
This document provides guidance on estimating the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for Harry Davis' company. It discusses:
1) Estimating the costs of different sources of capital, including debt, preferred stock, and common equity using various methods.
2) Calculating a WACC of 11.1% based on the company's current capital structure.
3) Factors that influence the WACC and why the composite WACC may not be appropriate for all projects. Procedures for adjusting the WACC for specific divisions or projects are discussed.
This document provides guidance on estimating the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for Harry Davis' company. It discusses:
1) Estimating the costs of different sources of capital, including debt, preferred stock, and common equity using various methods.
2) Calculating a WACC of 11.1% based on the company's current capital structure.
3) Factors that influence the WACC and why the composite WACC may not be appropriate for all projects. Procedures for adjusting the WACC for specific divisions or projects are discussed.
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Institute of Business Management
College of Business Management
Advanced Financial Management Second Assignment Attempt the Mini Case given on page number 374 of chapter 10, Cost of Capital of your text book.
Your text book is available on the LMS
Online Assignment submission deadline is August 14, 2021
Syed Rameez Gohar 25391
a. 1. What sources of capital should be included when you estimate Harry Davis’ weighted average cost of capital (WACC)?
Answer: The WACC is used primarily for making long-term capital investment decisions, i.e., for capital budgeting. Thus, the WACC should include the types of capital used to pay for long-term assets, and this is typically long-term debt, preferred stock (if used), and common stock. Short-term sources of capital consist of (1) spontaneous, noninterest-bearing liabilities such as accounts payable and accruals and (2) short- term interest-bearing debt, such as notes payable. If the firm uses short-term interest- bearing debt to acquire fixed assets rather than just to finance working capital needs, then the WACC should include a short-term debt component. Noninterest-bearing debt is generally not included in the cost of capital estimate because these funds are netted out when determining investment needs, that is, net rather than gross working capital is included in capital expenditures.
a. 2. Should the component costs be figured on a before-tax or an after-tax basis?
Answer: Stockholders are concerned primarily with those corporate cash flows that are available for their use, namely, those cash flows available to pay dividends or for reinvestment. Since dividends are paid from and reinvestment is made with after-tax dollars, all cash flow and rate of return calculations should be done on an after-tax basis.
a. 3. Should the costs be historical (embedded) costs or new (marginal) costs?
Syed Rameez Gohar 25391
Answer: In financial management, the cost of capital is used primarily to make decisions which involve raising new capital. Thus, the relevant component costs are today's marginal costs rather than historical costs.
b. What is the market interest rate on Harry Davis’ debt and its component cost of debt?
Answer: Harry Davis’ 12 percent bond with 15 years to maturity is currently selling for $1,153.72. Thus, its yield to maturity is 10 percent:
Enter n = 30 PV = -1153.72 pmt = 60 FV = 1000 find rd/2 = i = 5.0%. multiply by 2 to find the annual rate, rd = 10%,
rd(1 - T) = 10.0%(1 - 0.40) = 10.0%(0.60) = 6.0%.
Optional Question
Should flotation costs be included in the estimate?
Answer: The actual component cost of new debt will be somewhat higher than 6 percent because the firm will incur flotation costs in selling the new issue. However, flotation costs are typically small on public debt issues, and, more important, most debt is placed directly with banks, insurance companies, and the like, and in this case flotation costs are almost nonexistent.
Optional Question
Should you use the nominal cost of debt or the effective annual cost?
reason is that the cost of capital is used in capital budgeting, and capital budgeting cash flows are generally assumed to occur at year-end. Therefore, using nominal rates makes the treatment of the capital budgeting discount rate and cash flows consistent. c. 1. What is the firm's cost of preferred stock?
c. 2. Harry Davis’ preferred stock is riskier to investors than its debt, yet the preferred's yield to investors is lower than the yield to maturity on the debt. Does this suggest that you have made a mistake?
Answer: Corporate investors own most preferred stock, because 70 percent of preferred dividends received by corporations are nontaxable. Therefore, preferred often has a lower before-tax yield than the before-tax yield on debt issued by the same company. Note, though, that the after-tax yield to a corporate investor, and the after-tax cost to the issuer, are higher on preferred stock than on debt.
d. 1. What are the two primary ways companies raise common equity?
Answer: by retaining earnings and by issuing new common stock.
d. 2. Why is there a cost associated with reinvested earnings?
Answer: Management may either pay out earnings in the form of dividends or else retain earnings for reinvestment in the business. If part of the earnings is retained, an opportunity cost is incurred: stockholders could have received those earnings as dividends and then invested that money in stocks, bonds, real estate, and so on.
d. 3. Harry Davis doesn’t plan to issue new shares of common stock. Using the CAPM approach, what is Harry Davis’ estimated cost of equity?
Answer: rs = 0.07 + (0.06)1.2 = 14.2%.
e. 1. What is the estimated cost of equity using the discounted cash flow (DCF) approach?
e. 2. Suppose the firm has historically earned 15 percent on equity (ROE) and retained 35 percent of earnings, and investors expect this situation to continue in the future. How could you use this information to estimate the future dividend growth rate, and what growth rate would you get? Is this consistent with the 5 percent growth rate given earlier?
Answer:
g = (1 - Payout Ratio)ROE
g = (0.35)0.15 = 5.25%. .
e. 3. Could the DCF method be applied if the growth rate was not constant? How?
Answer: yes, you could use the DCF using nonconstant growth. You would find the PV of the dividends during the nonconstant growth period and add this value to the PV of the series of inflows when growth is assumed to become constant.
f. What is the cost of equity based on the bond-yield-plus-risk-premium method?
Answer: rs = company’s own bond yield + risk premium.
n = 30 PV = -1153.72 pmt = 60 FV = 1000 find r/2 = i = 5%. multiply by 2 to find the annual rate, r = 10%. The assumed risk premium is 4%,
rs = 0.10 + 0.04 = 14%.
g. What is your final estimate for the cost of equity, rs?
Answer: The final estimate for the cost of equity would simply be the average of the values found using the above three methods.
CAPM 14.2% DCF 13.8 BOND YIELD + R.P. 14.0 AVERAGE 14.0%
h. What is Harry Davis’ weighted average cost of capital (WACC)?
i. What factors influence Harry Davis’ composite WACC?
Answer: There are factors that the firm cannot control and those that they can control that influence WACC.
Factors The Firm Cannot Control:
Level Of Interest Rates Tax Rates
Factors The Firm Can Control:
Capital Structure Policy Dividend Policy Investment Policy
j. Should the company use the composite WACC as the hurdle rate for each of its projects?
Answer: No. The composite WACC reflects the risk of an average project undertaken by the firm. Therefore, the WACC only represents the “hurdle rate” for a typical project with average risk. Different projects have different risks. The project’s WACC should be adjusted to reflect the project’s risk.
Syed Rameez Gohar 25391
k. What procedures are used to determine the risk-adjusted cost of capital for a particular division? What approaches are used to measure a division’s beta?
Answer: The following procedures can be used to determine a division’s risk-adjusted cost of capital:
Subjective adjustments to the firm’s composite WACC.
Attempt to estimate what the cost of capital would be if the division were a stand- alone firm. This requires estimating the division’s beta.
The following approaches can be used to measure a division’s beta:
Pure play approach. Find several publicly traded companies exclusively in the project’s business. Then, use the average of their betas as a proxy for the project’s beta.
Accounting beta approach. Run a regression between the project’s ROA and the S&P index ROA. Accounting betas are correlated (0.5 - 0.6) with market betas. However, you normally can’t get data on new project ROAs before the capital budgeting decision has been made.
l. Harry Davis is interested in establishing a new division, which will focus
primarily on developing new internet-based projects. In trying to determine the cost of capital for this new division, you discover that stand-alone firms involved in similar projects have on average the following characteristics: Their capital structure is 10 percent debt and 90 percent common equity. Their cost of debt is typically 12 percent. The beta is 1.7. given this information, what would your estimate be for the division’s cost of capital?
m. What are three types of project risk? How is each type of risk used? Answer: The three types of project risk are:
Stand-Alone Risk Corporate Risk Market Risk
o. 1. Harry Davis estimates that if it issues new common stock, the flotation cost will be 15 percent. Harry Davis incorporates the flotation costs into the DCF approach. What is the estimated cost of newly issued common stock, taking into account the flotation cost?
o. 2. Suppose Harry Davis issues 30-year debt with a par value of $1,000 and a coupon rate of 10%, paid annually. If flotation costs are 2 percent, what is the after-tax cost of debt for the new bond?
Answer: n = 30, PV = (1-0.02)(1000) = 980, pmt = -(1-0.40)(100) = -60, FV = -1000. The
resulting i is 6.15%, which is the after-tax cost of debt.
p. What four common mistakes in estimating the WACC should Harry Davis avoid?
Answer: 1. Don’t use the coupon rate on a firm’s existing debt as the pre-tax cost of debt. Use the current cost of debt.
2. When estimating the risk premium for the CAPM approach, don’t subtract the current long-term t-bond rate from the historical average return on stocks.
Syed Rameez Gohar 25391
3. Don’t use book weights to estimate the weights for the capital structure. Use the target capital structure to determine the weights for the WACC. If you don’t have the target weights, then use market value rather than book value to obtain the weights. Use the book value of debt only as a last resort.
4. Always remember that capital components are sources of funding that come from investors. If it’s not a source of funding from an investor, then it’s not a capital component.
