Question 69 interest tax shield, capital structure, leverage, WACC
Which statement about risk, required return and capital structure is the most correct?
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.
A stock just paid its annual dividend of $9. The share price is $60. The required return of the stock is 10% pa as an effective annual rate.
What is the implied growth rate of the dividend per year?
Question 247 cross currency interest rate parity, no explanation
In the so called 'Swiss Loans Affair' of the 1980's, Australian banks offered loans denominated in Swiss Francs to Australian farmers at interest rates as low as 4% pa. This was far lower than interest rates on Australian Dollar loans which were above 10% due to very high inflation in Australia at the time.
In the late-1980's there was a large depreciation in the Australian Dollar. The Australian Dollar nearly halved in value against the Swiss Franc. Many Australian farmers went bankrupt since they couldn't afford the interest payments on the Swiss Franc loans because the Australian Dollar value of those payments nearly doubled. The farmers accused the banks of promoting Swiss Franc loans without making them aware of the risks.
What fundamental principal of finance did the Australian farmers (and the bankers) fail to understand?
A European call 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 having written (being short) the call option?
The boss of WorkingForTheManCorp has a wicked (and unethical) idea. He plans to pay his poor workers one week late so that he can get more interest on his cash in the bank.
Every week he is supposed to pay his 1,000 employees $1,000 each. So $1 million is paid to employees every week.
The boss was just about to pay his employees today, until he thought of this idea so he will actually pay them one week (7 days) later for the work they did last week and every week in the future, forever.
Bank interest rates are 10% pa, given as a real effective annual rate. So ##r_\text{eff annual, real} = 0.1## and the real effective weekly rate is therefore ##r_\text{eff weekly, real} = (1+0.1)^{1/52}-1 = 0.001834569##
All rates and cash flows are real, the inflation rate is 3% pa and there are 52 weeks per year. The boss will always pay wages one week late. The business will operate forever with constant real wages and the same number of employees.
What is the net present value (NPV) of the boss's decision to pay later?
The saying "buy low, sell high" suggests that investors should make a:
The following cash flows are expected:
- 10 yearly payments of $80, with the first payment in 6.5 years from now (first payment at t=6.5).
- A single payment of $500 in 4 years and 3 months (t=4.25) from now.
What is the NPV of the cash flows if the discount rate is 10% given as an effective annual rate?
A one year European-style call option has a strike price of $4.
The option's underlying stock currently trades at $5, pays no dividends and its standard deviation of continuously compounded returns is 47% pa.
The risk-free interest rate is 10% pa continuously compounded.
Use the Black-Scholes-Merton formula to calculate the option price. The call option price now is: