American Home Products Corporation

In general, the lower the company's reliance on debt for asset formation, the less risky the company is since excessive debt can lead to a very heavy interest and principal repayment burden. This is demonstrated through statistics such as high financial risk, low interest coverage ratios, and high debt ratios. However, when a company chooses to forgo debt and rely largely on equity, as in the case of AHP, the company does so at the expense of a tax reduction effect supplied by interest payments. Thus, a company has to consider both risk and tax issues when deciding on an optimal debt ratio.

ACME Home Improvements Inc. has made the decision to take their business internationally to Mexico City, Mexico. In doing so they will need to ensure they have a reliable and safe Information System Management plan or ISM. The headquarters office for ACME along with the Information Technology (IT) team for ACME Mexico City will consider an ISM plan that is suitable for the ACME Mexico City employees, the Mexican government and the stakeholders. The ISM plan must be able to ensure the assessment of the company’s information and provide solutions, must be able to address strengths and weaknesses that currently exist in the system and it should be able to control daily operations of the company. There are various

However, because the interest of debt could shield part of earnings from taxes and strengthen management’s incentive to increase sales. Some financial analysts hold the view that companies should take appropriate debt. The tax expense could be decreased along with the increase of debt.

In debt financing the interest expense is allowable expense resulting in low tax expense, where as in case of equity finance the cost of equity is dividend, and no advantage can be availed in tax.

Business risk evaluation – possible and moderate = medium business risk. The threat of new entrants and substitute products are very high, in addition to the high level of competition in the industry. Therefore, the business risk that MTI faces – losing customers due to lack of product differentiation, profit decrease due to increase in competition in the industry are likely possible to occur. In addition, the effects from new companies entering the industry will have a moderate effect on MTI’s revenue stream. As a conclusion, MTI faces medium business risk.

The relationship between capital structure and firm value has been discussed frequently in the literature by different researcher accordingly, in both theoretical and empirical studies. It has also been discussed that whether the firm has any optimal capital structure that has been adopted by an individual firm, or whether the proportions of debt usage is completely irrelevant to the individual firm value.

Please provide an articulate, concise, and theoretically sound answer. Answers need to be supported with examples from the texts and Exhibits. This may require some due diligence on your part. Please retype the question and your response.

The firm has decided to increase the debt finance component portion from 20% to 30% which is a good decision since the interest payments are 100% tax deductible. The appropriate capital structure would be to

Higher leverage is very likely to create value for a firm considering capital structure change by exerting financial discipline and more efficient corporate strategy changes.

The use of debt is estimated to increase AHP’s stock price due primarily to increases in EPS. It would be foolhardy, however, to ignore the potential setbacks to the firm by taking on much greater levels of debt:

After all of this we also need to keep in mind the financing deals that they have made with the Patricorp Group of $312,500 In for 41% of the equity, and $625,000 in subordinate debt. That was the previous debt that I talked about in the previous paragraph. As of the current revenues of the company, and considering the actual payments needed to pay they need to continue to grow the company to keep up and service the debt they will inquire. It is critical that they are successful with the growth, so that they do not fault on their agreement and have to give up more equity in the company so that they can retain ownership.

According to the Equilibrium Theory, a company has reached its optimal capital structure when it minimizes the total sum of taxes paid and the cost of financial distress. Taxes paid and the costs of financial distress develop in opposite directions as the interest coverage ratio (EBIT/interest) changes. While the tax shield effect and thus the amount of taxes paid at different coverage ratios can easily be calculated using the marginal tax rate (in the case of Diageo 27%), the cost of financial distress has to be approximated using sophisticated financial models (e.g. Monte Carlo Analysis) that take into account probabilities of different direct and indirect costs of financial distress.

Dividends are subjected to higher tax rate compare to capital gain increased due to share buy-back. This discourages shareholders from desire to receive high dividends in place of higher capital gain as share values increase. A comparison is made below between the proposed capital structure and dividend policy.

Already in 1958, Modigliani and Miller have pointed the discussion of capital structure towards the cost of debt and equity. According to their first proposition, in a world of no corporate taxes and with perfect markets, financial leverage has no effect on a firm’s value. In their second proposition, they state that the cost of equity equals a linear function defined by the required return on assets and the cost of debt (Modigliani and Miller, 1958).

Dixon is raising debt capital by issuing long3 and short term bonds; an interest rate of