A company runs a number of slaughterhouses which supply hamburger meat to McDonalds. The company is afraid that live cattle prices will increase over the next year, even though there is widespread belief in the market that they will be stable. What can the company do to hedge against the risk of increasing live cattle prices? Which statement(s) are correct?
(i) buy call options on live cattle.
(ii) buy put options on live cattle.
(iii) sell call options on live cattle.
Select the most correct response:
Question 448 franking credit, personal tax on dividends, imputation tax system
A small private company has a single shareholder. This year the firm earned a $100 profit before tax. All of the firm's after tax profits will be paid out as dividends to the owner.
The corporate tax rate is 30% and the sole shareholder's personal marginal tax rate is 45%.
The Australian imputation tax system applies because the company generates all of its income in Australia and pays corporate tax to the Australian Tax Office. Therefore all of the company's dividends are fully franked. The sole shareholder is an Australian for tax purposes and can therefore use the franking credits to offset his personal income tax liability.
What will be the personal tax payable by the shareholder and the corporate tax payable by the company?
Question 455 income and capital returns, payout policy, DDM, market efficiency
A fairly priced unlevered firm plans to pay a dividend of $1 next year (t=1) which is expected to grow by 3% pa every year after that. The firm's required return on equity is 8% pa.
The firm is thinking about reducing its future dividend payments by 10% so that it can use the extra cash to invest in more projects which are expected to return 8% pa, and have the same risk as the existing projects. Therefore, next year's dividend will be $0.90. No new equity or debt will be issued to fund the new projects, they'll all be funded by the cut in dividends.
What will be the stock's new annual capital return (proportional increase in price per year) if the change in payout policy goes ahead?
Assume that payout policy is irrelevant to firm value (so there's no signalling effects) and that all rates are effective annual rates.
An asset's total expected return over the next year is given by:
###r_\text{total} = \dfrac{c_1+p_1-p_0}{p_0} ###
Where ##p_0## is the current price, ##c_1## is the expected income in one year and ##p_1## is the expected price in one year. The total return can be split into the income return and the capital return.
Which of the following is the expected capital return?
A trader buys one crude oil futures contract on the CME expiring in one year with a locked-in futures price of $38.94 per barrel. If the trader doesn’t close out her contract before expiry then in one year she will have the:
Question 658 CFFA, income statement, balance sheet, no explanation
To value a business's assets, the free cash flow of the firm (FCFF, also called CFFA) needs to be calculated. This requires figures from the firm's income statement and balance sheet. For what figures is the income statement needed? Note that the income statement is sometimes also called the profit and loss, P&L, or statement of financial performance.
Question 699 utility, risk aversion, utility function, gamble
Mr Blue, Miss Red and Mrs Green are people with different utility functions.
Each person has $50 of initial wealth. A coin toss game is offered to each person at a casino where the player can win or lose $50. Each player can flip a coin and if they flip heads, they receive $50. If they flip tails then they will lose $50. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?
Question 807 market efficiency, expected and historical returns, CAPM, beta, systematic risk, no explanation
You work in Asia and just woke up. It looked like a nice day but then you read the news and found out that last night the American share market fell by 10% while you were asleep due to surprisingly poor macro-economic world news. You own a portfolio of liquid stocks listed in Asia with a beta of 1.6. When the Asian equity markets open, what do you expect to happen to your share portfolio? Assume that the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is correct and that the market portfolio contains all shares in the world, of which American shares are a big part. Your portfolio beta is measured against this world market portfolio.
When the Asian equity market opens for trade, you would expect your portfolio value to: