Exam 14: Capital Structure and Leverage

Which of the following statements is CORRECT?

Some people--including the current chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors--have argued that one advantage of corporate debt from the stockholders' standpoint is that the existence of debt forces managers to focus on cash flow and to refrain from spending too much of the firm's money on private plane and other "perks." This is one of the factors that led to the rise of LBOs and private equity firms.

Confu Inc. expects to have the following data during the coming year. What is the firm's expected ROE? Assets $200,000 Interest rate 8% Debt/Assets, book value 65% Tax rate 40% EBIT $25,000

Modigliani and Miller's first article led to the conclusion that capital structure is "irrelevant" because it has no effect on a firm's value. However, that article was criticized because it assumed that no taxes existed. MM then revised their original article to include corporate taxes, and this model led to the conclusion that a firm's value would be maximized if it used (almost) 100% debt.

Your company, which is financed entirely with common equity, plans to manufacture a new product, a cell phone that can be worn like a wristwatch. Two robotic machines are available to make the phone, Machine A and Machine B. The price per phone will be $250.00 regardless of which machine is used to make it. The fixed and variable costs associated with the two machines are shown below, along with the capital (all equity) that must be invested to purchase each machine. The expected sales level is 25,000 units. Your company has tax loss carry-forwards that will cause its tax rate to be zero for the life of the project, so T = 0. How much higher or lower will the project's ROE be if you select the machine that produces the higher ROE, i.e., what is ROEB - ROEA? (Hint: Since the firm uses no debt and its tax rate is zero, ROE = EBIT/Required investment.)

Different borrowers have different risks of bankruptcy, and if a borrower goes bankrupt, its lenders will probably not get back the full amount of funds that they loaned. Therefore, lenders charge higher rates to borrowers judged to be more likely to go bankrupt.

Your uncle is considering investing in a new company that will produce high quality stereo speakers. The sales price would be set at 1.5 times the variable cost per unit; the variable cost per unit is estimated to be $75.00; and fixed costs are estimated at $1,200,000. What sales volume would be required to break even, i.e., to have EBIT = zero?

The Modigliani and Miller (MM) articles implicitly assumed that bankruptcy did not exist. That led to the development of the "trade-off" model, where the firm's value first rises with the use of debt due to the tax shelter of debt, but later falls as more debt is added because the potential costs of bankruptcy begin to more than offset the tax shelter benefits. Under the trade-off theory, an optimal capital structure exists.

According to Modigliani and Miller (MM), in a world without taxes the optimal capital structure for a firm is approximately 100% debt financing.

Modigliani and Miller's first article led to the conclusion that capital structure is extremely important, and that efirm has an optimal capital structure that maximizes its value and minimizes its cost of capital.

The trade-off theory states that capital structure decisions involve a tradeoff between the costs and benefits of debt financing.