Bonds X and Y are issued by different companies, but they both pay a semi-annual coupon of 10% pa and they have the same face value ($100), maturity (3 years) and yield (10%) as each other.
Which of the following statements is true?
A project has the following cash flows:
| Project Cash Flows | |
| Time (yrs) | Cash flow ($) |
| 0 | -400 |
| 1 | 0 |
| 2 | 500 |
What is the payback period of the project in years?
Normally cash flows are assumed to happen at the given time. But here, assume that the cash flows are received smoothly over the year. So the $500 at time 2 is actually earned smoothly from t=1 to t=2.
Three important classes of investable risky assets are:
- Corporate debt which has low total risk,
- Real estate which has medium total risk,
- Equity which has high total risk.
Assume that the correlation between total returns on:
- Corporate debt and real estate is 0.1,
- Corporate debt and equity is 0.1,
- Real estate and equity is 0.5.
You are considering investing all of your wealth in one or more of these asset classes. Which portfolio will give the lowest total risk? You are restricted from shorting any of these assets. Disregard returns and the risk-return trade-off, pretend that you are only concerned with minimising risk.
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
- 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?
An investor bought a 20 year 5% pa fixed coupon government bond priced at par. The face value is $100. Coupons are paid semi-annually and the next one is in 6 months.
Six months later, just after the coupon at that time was paid, yields suddenly and unexpectedly rose to 5.5% pa. Note that all yields above are given as APR's compounding semi-annually.
What was the bond investors' historical total return over that first 6 month period, given as an effective semi-annual rate?
A company advertises an investment costing $1,000 which they say is underpriced. They say that it has an expected total return of 15% pa, but a required return of only 10% pa. Of the 15% pa total expected return, the dividend yield is expected to always be 7% pa and rest is the capital yield.
Assuming that the company's statements are correct, what is the NPV of buying the investment if the 15% total return lasts for the next 100 years (t=0 to 100), then reverts to 10% after that time? Also, what is the NPV of the investment if the 15% return lasts forever?
In both cases, assume that the required return of 10% remains constant, the dividends can only be re-invested at 10% pa and all returns are given as effective annual rates.
The answer choices below are given in the same order (15% for 100 years, and 15% forever):
A trader sells a one year futures contract on crude oil. The contract is for the delivery of 1,000 barrels. The current futures price is $38.94 per barrel. The initial margin is $3,410 per contract, and the maintenance margin is $3,100 per contract.
What is the smallest price change that would lead to a margin call for the seller?
Question 704 utility, risk aversion, utility function, gamble
Mr Blue, Miss Red and Mrs Green are people with different utility functions.
Each person has $256 of initial wealth. A coin toss game is offered to each person at a casino where the player can win or lose $256. Each player can flip a coin and if they flip heads, they receive $256. If they flip tails then they will lose $256. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?
Question 884 monetary policy, impossible trinity, foreign exchange rate, no explanation
According to the impossible trinity, a currency can only have two of these three desirable traits: be fixed against the USD; convertible to and from USD for traders and investors so there are open goods, services and capital markets; and allow independent monetary policy set by the country’s central bank, independent of the US central bank.
Which of the following exchange rate regimes sacrifices fixing the exchange rate to the USD? In other words, which regime uses a floating exchange rate?
Question 983 corporate financial decision theory, DuPont formula, accounting ratio
A company manager is thinking about the firm's book assets-to-equity ratio, also called the 'equity multiplier' in the DuPont formula:
###\text{Equity multiplier} = \dfrac{\text{Total Assets}}{\text{Owners' Equity}}###What's the name of the decision that the manager is thinking about? In other words, the assets-to-equity ratio is the main subject of what decision?
Note: DuPont formula for analysing book return on equity:
###\begin{aligned} \text{ROE} &= \dfrac{\text{Net Profit}}{\text{Sales}} \times \dfrac{\text{Sales}}{\text{Total Assets}} \times \dfrac{\text{Total Assets}}{\text{Owners' Equity}} \\ &= \text{Net profit margin} \times \text{Total asset turnover} \times \text{Equity multiplier} \\ \end{aligned}###