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A company has:

100 million ordinary shares outstanding which are trading at a price of $5 each. Market analysts estimated that the company's ordinary stock has a beta of 1.5. The risk-free rate is 5% and the market return is 10%.
1 million preferred shares which have a face (or par) value of $100 and pay a constant annual dividend of 9% of par. The next dividend will be paid in one year. Assume that all preference dividends will be paid when promised. They currently trade at a price of $90 each.
Debentures that have a total face value of $200 million and a yield to maturity of 6% per annum. They are publicly traded and their market price is equal to 110% of their face value.

The corporate tax rate is 30%. All returns and yields are given as effective annual rates.

What is the company's after-tax Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC)? Assume a classical tax system.

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 400 option, no explanation

A European put option will mature in ##T## years with a strike price of ##K## dollars. The underlying asset has a price of ##S## dollars.

What is an expression for the payoff at maturity ##(f_T)## in dollars from owning (being long) the put option?

Question 418 capital budgeting, NPV, interest tax shield, WACC, CFFA, CAPM

Project Data
Project life	1 year
Initial investment in equipment	$8m
Depreciation of equipment per year	$8m
Expected sale price of equipment at end of project	0
Unit sales per year	4m
Sale price per unit	$10
Variable cost per unit	$5
Fixed costs per year, paid at the end of each year	$2m
Interest expense in first year (at t=1)	$0.562m
Corporate tax rate	30%
Government treasury bond yield	5%
Bank loan debt yield	9%
Market portfolio return	10%
Covariance of levered equity returns with market	0.32
Variance of market portfolio returns	0.16
Firm's and project's debt-to-equity ratio	50%

Notes

Due to the project, current assets will increase by $6m now (t=0) and fall by $6m at the end (t=1). Current liabilities will not be affected.

Assumptions

The debt-to-equity 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 project is undertaken by a firm, not an individual.

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

Question 656 debt terminology

Which of the following statements is NOT correct? Lenders:

Question 748 income and capital returns, DDM, ex dividend date

A stock will pay you a dividend of $2 tonight if you buy it today.

Thereafter the annual dividend is expected to grow by 3% pa, so the next dividend after the $2 one tonight will be $2.06 in one year, then in two years it will be $2.1218 and so on. The stock's required return is 8% pa.

What is the stock price today and what do you expect the stock price to be tomorrow, approximately?

Question 768 accounting terminology, book and market values, no explanation

Accountants and finance professionals have lots of names for the same things which can be quite confusing.

Which of the following groups of items are NOT synonyms?

Question 806 stock split, no explanation

A firm conducts a two-for-one stock split. Which of the following consequences would NOT be expected?

Question 822 option, sunk cost, no explanation

When does a European option's last-traded market price become a sunk cost?

Question 922 Stutzer portfolio performance indicator, Sharpe ratio, no explanation

Stutzer’s Portfolio Performance Indicator (PPI) ranks portfolios similarly to what other performance metric, assuming that the portfolios’ continuously compounded returns (LGDR’s) are normally distributed?