Weighted Average Cost of Capital (2003)
Weighted Average Cost of Capital (2003)
Weighted Average Cost of Capital (2003)
The amount of debt and equity that a company must maintain can
be calculated via the WACC.
Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) is therefore an
overall return that a corporation MUST earn on its existing
assets and business operations in order to increase or
maintain the current value of the current stock. For
example, if Microsoft's WACC is 15% and current stock
price is 28$, then the company must earn a 15% return on
its existing assets and business operations (net income) in
order to MAINTAIN the stock price at $28. The last thing
that corporations would wish to happen is their stock price
falling down!
Example:
Coco Corp. has issued 10,000 units of bonds that are currently selling at
98.5. The coupon rate on these bonds is 6% per annum with interest paid
semi-annually. The maturity left on these bonds is 3 years. The company
has 2,000,000 common shares outstanding with the current stock price at
$10 / share. The stock beta is 1.5, risk free rate for government bonds is
4.5% and the Expected Return on the Stock Market is 14.5%. The tax rate
for the corporation is 30%.
Cost of equity = Risk free rate of return + Premium expected for risk
Cost of equity = Risk free rate of return + Beta x (market rate of return-
risk free rate of return) Where Beta= sensitivity to movements in the
relevant market:
Where:
Es, The expected return for a security
R f, The expected risk-free return in that market (government
bond yield)
βs, The sensitivity to market risk for the security
RM, The historical return of the stock market/ equity market
(RM-Rf), The risk premium of market assets over risk free assets.
The risk free rate is taken from the lowest yielding bonds in
the particular market, such as government bonds.
Expected return:
The expected return (or required rate of return for investors) can be
calculated with the "dividend capitalization model", which is
Comments:
The models state that investors will expect a return that is the risk-
free return plus the security's sensitivity to market risk times the
market risk premium.
The risk premium varies over time and place, but in some
developed countries during the twentieth century it has averaged
around 5%. The equity market real capital gain return has been
about the same as annual real GDP growth. The capital gains on
the Dow Jones Industrial Average have been 1.6% per year over
the period 1910-2005. The dividends have increased the total "real"
return on average equity to the double, about 3.2%.
The sensitivity to market risk (β) is unique for each firm and
depends on everything from management to its business and
capital structure. This value cannot be known "ex ante"
(beforehand), but can be estimated from ex post (past) returns and
past experience with similar firms.
The cost of debt is computed by taking the rate on a risk free bond
whose duration matches the term structure of the corporate debt,
then adding a default premium. This default premium will rise as the
amount of debt increases (since, all other things being equal, the
risk rises as the amount of debt rises). Since in most cases debt
expense is a deductible expense, the cost of debt is computed as
an after tax cost to make it comparable with the cost of equity
(earnings are after-tax as well). Thus, for profitable firms, debt is
discounted by the tax rate. The formula can be written as
where T is the corporate tax rate and Rf is the risk free rate.
REASON:
* The cost of equity and debt increases with the increase in debt.