Fight Finance

Treasury bonds currently have a return of 5% pa. A stock has a beta of 0.5 and the market return is 10% pa. What is the expected return of the stock?

A newly floated farming company is financed with senior bonds, junior bonds, cumulative non-voting preferred stock and common stock. The new company has no retained profits and due to floods it was unable to record any revenues this year, leading to a loss. The firm is not bankrupt yet since it still has substantial contributed equity (same as paid-up capital).

On which securities must it pay interest or dividend payments in this terrible financial year?

What is the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of the project detailed in the table below?

Assume that the cash flows shown in the table are paid all at once at the given point in time. All answers are given as effective annual rates.

Stocks in the United States usually pay quarterly dividends. For example, the software giant Microsoft paid a $0.23 dividend every quarter over the 2013 financial year and plans to pay a $0.28 dividend every quarter over the 2014 financial year.

Using the dividend discount model and net present value techniques, calculate the stock price of Microsoft assuming that:

• The time now is the beginning of July 2014. The next dividend of $0.28 will be received in 3 months (end of September 2014), with another 3 quarterly payments of $0.28 after this (end of December 2014, March 2015 and June 2015).
• The quarterly dividend will increase by 2.5% every year, but each quarterly dividend over the year will be equal. So each quarterly dividend paid in the financial year beginning in September 2015 will be $ 0.287 ##(=0.28×(1+0.025)^1)##, with the last at the end of June 2016. In the next financial year beginning in September 2016 each quarterly dividend will be $0.294175 ##(=0.28×(1+0.025)^2)##, with the last at the end of June 2017, and so on forever.
• The total required return on equity is 6% pa.
• The required return and growth rate are given as effective annual rates.
• Dividend payment dates and ex-dividend dates are at the same time.
• Remember that there are 4 quarters in a year and 3 months in a quarter.

What is the current stock price?

Which of the following statements about book and market equity is NOT correct?

What is the present value of a real payment of $500 in 2 years? The nominal discount rate is 7% pa and the inflation rate is 4% pa.

The standard deviation of monthly changes in the spot price of corn is 50 cents per bushel. The standard deviation of monthly changes in the futures price of corn is 40 cents per bushel. The correlation between the spot price of corn and the futures price of corn is 0.9.

It is now March. A corn chip manufacturer is committed to buying 250,000 bushels of corn in May. The spot price of corn is 381 cents per bushel and the June futures price is 399 cents per bushel.

The corn chip manufacturer wants to use the June corn futures contracts to hedge his risk. Each futures contract is for the delivery of 5,000 bushels of corn. One bushel is about 127 metric tons.

How many corn futures should the corn chip manufacturer buy to hedge his risk? Round your answer to the nearest whole number of contracts. Remember to tail the hedge.

The Australian Federal Government lends money to domestic students to pay for their university education. This is known as the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). The nominal interest rate on the HECS loan is set equal to the consumer price index (CPI) inflation rate. The interest is capitalised every year, which means that the interest is added to the principal. The interest and principal does not need to be repaid by students until they finish study and begin working.

Which of the following statements about HECS loans is NOT correct?

If someone says "my shares rose by 10% last year", what do you assume that they mean? The effective annual: