Fight Finance

Question 1  NPV

Jan asks you for a loan. He wants $100 now and offers to pay you back $120 in 1 year. You can borrow and lend from the bank at an interest rate of 10% pa, given as an effective annual rate.

Ignore credit risk. Remember:

### V_0 = \frac{V_t}{(1+r_\text{eff})^t} ###

Will you or Jan's deal?

Question 178  bond pricing, premium par and discount bonds

Which one of the following bonds is trading at a discount?

(a) a ten-year bond with a $4000 face value whose yield to maturity is 6.0% and coupon rate is 6.5% paid semi-annually.

(b) a 6-year bond with a principal of $40,000 and a price of $45,000.

(c) a 15-year bond with a $10,000 face value whose yield to maturity is 8.0% and coupon rate is 10.0% paid semi-annually.

(d) a two-year bond with a $50,000 face value whose yield to maturity is 5.2% and coupon rate is 5.2% paid semi-annually.

(e) None of the above bonds are discount bonds.

Question 282  expected and historical returns, income and capital returns

You're the boss of an investment bank's equities research team. Your five analysts are each trying to find the expected total return over the next year of shares in a mining company. The mining firm:

• Is regarded as a mature company since it's quite stable in size and was floated around 30 years ago. It is not a high-growth company;
• Share price is very sensitive to changes in the price of the market portfolio, economic growth, the exchange rate and commodities prices. Due to this, its standard deviation of total returns is much higher than that of the market index;
• Experienced tough times in the last 10 years due to unexpected falls in commodity prices.
• Shares are traded in an active liquid market.

Your team of analysts present their findings, and everyone has different views. While there's no definitive true answer, whose calculation of the expected total return is the most plausible? Assume that:

• The analysts' source data is correct and true, but their inferences might be wrong;
• All returns and yields are given as effective annual nominal rates.

(a) Alice says 5% pa since she calculated that this was the average total yield on government bonds over the last 10 years. She says that this is also the expected total yield implied by current prices on one year government bonds.

(b) Bob says 4% pa since he calculated that this was the average total return on the mining stock over the last 10 years.

(c) Cate says 3% pa since she calculated that this was the average growth rate of the share price over the last 10 years.

(d) Dave says 6% pa since he calculated that this was the average growth rate of the share market price index (not the accumulation index) over the last 10 years.

(e) Eve says 15% pa since she calculated that this was the discount rate implied by the dividend discount model using the current share price, forecast dividend in one year and a 3% growth rate in dividends thereafter, which is the expected long term inflation rate.

Question 289  DDM, expected and historical returns, ROE

In the dividend discount model:

###P_0 = \dfrac{C_1}{r-g}###

The return ##r## is supposed to be the:

(a) Expected future total return of the market price of equity.

(b) Expected future total return of the book price of equity.

(c) Actual historical total return on the market price of equity.

(d) Actual historical total return on the book price of equity.

(e) Actual historical return on equity (ROE) defined as (Net Income / Owners Equity).

Question 312  foreign exchange rate, American and European terms

If the current AUD exchange rate is USD 0.9686 = AUD 1, what is the American terms quote of the AUD against the USD?

(a) 0.9686 USD per AUD

(b) 0.9686 AUD per USD

(c) 1.0324 USD per AUD

(d) 1.0324 AUD per USD

(e) 1.0324 AUD per 2 USD

Question 358  PE ratio, Multiples valuation

Estimate the Chinese bank ICBC's share price using a backward-looking price earnings (PE) multiples approach with the following assumptions and figures only. Note that the renminbi (RMB) is the Chinese currency, also known as the yuan (CNY).

• The 4 major Chinese banks ICBC, China Construction Bank (CCB), Bank of China (BOC) and Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) are comparable companies;
• ICBC 's historical earnings per share (EPS) is RMB 0.74;
• CCB's backward-looking PE ratio is 4.59;
• BOC 's backward-looking PE ratio is 4.78;
• ABC's backward-looking PE ratio is also 4.78;

Note: Figures sourced from Google Finance on 25 March 2014. Share prices are from the Shanghai stock exchange.

(a) RMB 6.4595

(b) RMB 6.3739

(c) RMB 6.3311

(d) RMB 3.4903

(e) RMB 3.3966

Question 419  capital budgeting, NPV, interest tax shield, WACC, CFFA, CAPM, no explanation

Project Data
Project life	1 year
Initial investment in equipment	$6m
Depreciation of equipment per year	$6m
Expected sale price of equipment at end of project	0
Unit sales per year	9m
Sale price per unit	$8
Variable cost per unit	$6
Fixed costs per year, paid at the end of each year	$1m
Interest expense in first year (at t=1)	$0.53m
Tax rate	30%
Government treasury bond yield	5%
Bank loan debt yield	6%
Market portfolio return	10%
Covariance of levered equity returns with market	0.08
Variance of market portfolio returns	0.16
Firm's and project's debt-to-assets ratio	50%

Notes

1. Due to the project, current assets will increase by $5m now (t=0) and fall by $5m at the end (t=1). Current liabilities will not be affected.

Assumptions

• The debt-to-assets ratio will be kept constant throughout the life of the project. The amount of interest expense at the end of each period has been correctly calculated to maintain this constant debt-to-equity ratio.
• Millions are represented by 'm'.
• All cash flows occur at the start or end of the year as appropriate, not in the middle or throughout the year.
• All rates and cash flows are real. The inflation rate is 2% pa.
• All rates are given as effective annual rates.
• The 50% capital gains tax discount is not available since the project is undertaken by a firm, not an individual.

What is the net present value (NPV) of the project?

(a) $7.33k

(b) $7.299k

(c) $6.946k

(d) $6.729k

(e) $6.667k

Question 498  NPV, Annuity, perpetuity with growth, multi stage growth model

A business project is expected to cost $100 now (t=0), then pay $10 at the end of the third (t=3), fourth, fifth and sixth years, and then grow by 5% pa every year forever. So the cash flow will be $10.5 at the end of the seventh year (t=7), then $11.025 at the end of the eighth year (t=8) and so on perpetually. The total required return is 10℅ pa.

Which of the following formulas will NOT give the correct net present value of the project?

(a) ##-100+ \dfrac{ \dfrac{10}{0.1} \left(1-\dfrac{1}{(1+0.1)^3} \right)}{(1+0.1)^2} +\dfrac{\left(\dfrac{10}{0.1-0.05}\right)}{(1+0.1)^5} ##

(b) ##-100+ \dfrac{10}{(1+0.1)^3} +\dfrac{10}{(1+0.1)^4} +\dfrac{10}{(1+0.1)^5} +\dfrac{\left(\dfrac{10}{0.1-0.05}\right)}{(1+0.1)^5} ##

(c) ##-100+ \dfrac{ \dfrac{10}{0.1} \left(1-\dfrac{1}{(1+0.1)^4} \right)}{(1+0.1)^2} +\dfrac{\left(\dfrac{10.5}{0.1-0.05}\right)}{(1+0.1)^6} ##

(d) ##-100+ \dfrac{10}{(1+0.1)^3} +\dfrac{10}{(1+0.1)^4} +\dfrac{10}{(1+0.1)^5} +\dfrac{10}{(1+0.1)^6} +\dfrac{\left(\dfrac{10.5}{0.1-0.05}\right)}{(1+0.1)^6} ##

(e) ##-100+ \dfrac{ \dfrac{10}{0.1} \left(1-\dfrac{1}{(1+0.1)^3} \right)}{(1+0.1)^3} +\dfrac{\left(\dfrac{10}{0.1-0.05}\right)}{(1+0.1)^5} ##

Question 528  DDM, income and capital returns

The perpetuity with growth formula, also known as the dividend discount model (DDM) or Gordon growth model, is appropriate for valuing a company's shares. ##P_0## is the current share price, ##C_1## is next year's expected dividend, ##r## is the total required return and ##g## is the expected growth rate of the dividend.

###P_0=\dfrac{C_1}{r-g}###

The below graph shows the expected future price path of the company's shares. Which of the following statements about the graph is NOT correct?

(a) Between points A and B, the share price is expected to grow by ##r##.

(b) Between points B and C, the share price is expected to instantaneously fall by ##C_1##.

(c) Between points A and C, the share price is expected to grow by ##g##.

(d) Between points B and D, the share price is expected to grow by ##g##.

(e) Between points D and E, the share price is expected to instantaneously fall by ##C_1.(1+r)^1##.

Question 874  utility, return distribution, log-normal distribution, arithmetic and geometric averages

Who was the first theorist to endorse the maximisiation of the geometric average gross discrete return for investors (not gamblers) since it gave a "...portfolio that has a greater probability of being as valuable or more valuable than any other significantly different portfolio at the end of n years, n being large"?

(a) Daniel Bernoulli.

(b) John Larry Kelly Jr.

(c) Henry Allen Latane.

(d) Ole Peters.

(e) Paul Anthony Samuelson.