Exam 10: Cost of Capital

You were hired as a consultant to Giambono Company, whose target capital structure is 40% debt, 15% preferred, and 45% common equity. The after-tax cost of debt is 6.00%, the cost of preferred is 7.50%, and the cost of retained earnings is 12.75%. The firm will not be issuing any new stock. What is its WACC?

A) Butcher Timber Company hired your consulting firm to help them estimate the cost of equity. The yield on the firm's bonds is 8.75%, and your firm's economists believe that the cost of equity can be estimated using a risk premium of 3.85% over a firm's own cost of debt. What is an estimate of the firm's cost of equity from retained earnings?

The lower the firm's tax rate, the lower will be its after-tax cost of debt and also its WACC, other things held constant.

Daves Inc. recently hired you as a consultant to estimate the company's WACC. You have obtained the following information. (1) The firm's noncallable bonds mature in 20 years, have an 8.00% annual coupon, a par value of $1,000, and a market price of $1,050.00. (2) The company's tax rate is 40%. (3) The risk-free rate is 4.50%, the market risk premium is 5.50%, and the stock's beta is 1.20. (4) The target capital structure consists of 35% debt and the balance is common equity. The firm uses the CAPM to estimate the cost of equity, and it does not expect to issue any new common stock. What is its WACC?

The cost of preferred stock to a firm must be adjusted to an after-tax figure because 70% of dividends received by a corporation may be excluded from the receiving corporation's taxable income.

When estimating the cost of equity by use of the DCF method, the single biggest potential problem is to determine the growth rate that investors use when they estimate a stock's expected future rate of return. This problem leaves us unsure of the true value of rs.

Which of the following statements is CORRECT?

Which of the following statements is CORRECT?

Sorensen Systems Inc. is expected to pay a $2.50 dividend at year end (D1 = $2.50), the dividend is expected to grow at a constant rate of 5.50% a year, and the common stock currently sells for $52.50 a share. The before-tax cost of debt is 7.50%, and the tax rate is 40%. The target capital structure consists of 45% debt and 55% common equity. What is the company's WACC if all the equity used is from retained earnings?

Which of the following statements is CORRECT?

Since 70% of the preferred dividends received by a corporation are excluded from taxable income, the component cost of equity for a company that pays half of its earnings out as common dividends and half as preferred dividends should, theoretically, be Cost of equity = rs(0.30)(0.50) + rps(1 - T)(0.70)(0.50).

Keys Printing plans to issue a $1,000 par value, 20-year noncallable bond with a 7.00% annual coupon, paid semiannually. The company's marginal tax rate is 40.00%, but Congress is considering a change in the corporate tax rate to 30.00%. By how much would the component cost of debt used to calculate the WACC change if the new tax rate was adopted?

The higher the firm's flotation cost for new common equity, the more likely the firm is to use preferred stock, which has no flotation cost, and retained earnings, whose cost is the average return on the assets that are acquired.

Scanlon Inc.'s CFO hired you as a consultant to help her estimate the cost of capital. You have been provided with the following data: rRF = 4.10%; RPM = 5.25%; and b = 1.30. Based on the CAPM approach, what is the cost of equity from retained earnings?

The reason why retained earnings have a cost equal to rs is because investors think they can (i.e., expect to) earn rs on investments with the same risk as the firm's common stock, and if the firm does not think that it can earn rs on the earnings that it retains, it should pay those earnings out to its investors. Thus, the cost of retained earnings is based on the opportunity cost principle.

Bolster Foods' (BF) balance sheet shows a total of $25 million long-term debt with a coupon rate of 8.50%. The yield to maturity on this debt is 8.00%, and the debt has a total current market value of $27 million. The balance sheet also shows that the company has 10 million shares of stock, and the stock has a book value per share of $5.00. The current stock price is $20.00 per share, and stockholders' required rate of return, rs, is 12.25%. The company recently decided that its target capital structure should have 35% debt, with the balance being common equity. The tax rate is 40%. Calculate WACCs based on book, market, and target capital structures, and then find the sum of these three WACCs.

If investors' aversion to risk rose, causing the slope of the SML to increase, this would have a greater impact on the required rate of return on equity, rs, than on the interest rate on long-term debt, rd, for most firms. Other things held constant, this would lead to an increase in the use of debt and a decrease in the use of equity. However, other things would not stay constant if firms used a lot more debt, as that would increase the riskiness of both debt and equity and thus limit the shift toward debt.

The firm's cost of external equity raised by issuing new stock is the same as the required rate of return on the firm's outstanding common stock.

Which of the following statements is CORRECT?

If a firm's marginal tax rate is increased, this would, other things held constant, lower the cost of debt used to calculate its WACC.