Aspen Technology, Inc: Currency Hedging Review HBS

Be Our Guest’s balance sheet shows good signs of liquidity. Current Ratios for the past four years have remained above 1 proving that the company can handle its current liabilities. The current ratios are not extremely high (19941.27, 1995- 2.17, 1996- 1.15 and 1997- 1.16), but they can cover the current liabilities. It is important to note that the company is operating on a thin line because the current assets are barely covering the current liabilities. This is particularly unpleasant because we are dealing with a company operating in a seasonal business. It is a concern that the current ratio slightly eroded after 1995, and this is primarily due to Be Our Guest converting the bank line into long term debt in

The goal of this case is to help Sandra Meyer develop a presentation to address Henry Bosse’s concerns about international investments. The general idea is to demonstrate to Henry the benefits of international diversification, if any. To achieve this goal, you need to have a view on 1) the impact of foreign exchange (FX) rates on the return and risk of international investments, and 2) the impact of having more assets on the return and risk of the investment portfolio To form views on these two points, answer the following questions: I. The impact of FX rates on the risk and return of foreign investments 1a) Using data in Appendix A, calculate the

General Motors Corporation, the world’s largest automaker, has an extensive global outreach, which places the firm in competition with automakers worldwide, and subjects itself to significant exchange rate exposure. In particular, despite most of its revenues and production being derived from North America, depreciating yen rates pose problems for the firm indirectly through economic exposure. While GM possesses ‘passive’ hedging strategies for balance sheet and income statement exposures, management has not yet quantified or recognized solutions to possible losses from the indirect competitive exposure it now shared with Japanese automakers in the U.S import

Creditors normally focus on the liquidity or solvency of the borrower in terms of current ratio and quick ratio, which indicate whether the company has enough working capital to cover the short-term debts. Myer will enter into a syndicated facility agreement to refinance the existing borrowings of the Myer Group. Besides, creditors are interested in the business risks the company might undertake, which indicate the possibility that the company might be unable to pay back the long-term liability in the future. From this point, the expectation on high return on investment and high profitability in the long run make the creditor’s interest aligned with shareholders’ value.

2. Forecast the firm’s financial statements for 2002 and 2003. What will be the external financing requirements of the firm in those years? Can the firm repay its loan within a reasonable period? In order to forecast the financial statements of 2002 and 2003, the following assumptions need to be made. The growth of sales is 15%, same as 2001, which is estimated by managers. The rate of production costs and expenses per sales is constant to 50%. Administration and selling expenses is the average of last 4 years. The depreciation is $7.8 million per year, which is calculated by $54.6 million divided by 7 years. Tax rate is 24.5%, which is provided. The dividend is $2 million per year only when the company makes profits. Therefore, we assume that there will be no dividend in 2003. Gross PPE will be $27.3 million (54.6/2) per year. We also assume there is no more long term debt, because any funds need in the case are short term debt, it keeps at $18.2 million. According to the forecast, Star River needs external financing approximately $94 million and $107 million in 2002 and 2003, respectively. In order to analysis if the company can repay the debt, we need to know the interest coverage ratio, current ratio and D/E ratio. The interest coverage ratios through the forecast were 1.23 and 0.87 respectively, which is the danger signal to the managers, because in 2003, the profits even not

This case explores the operating exposure of Jaguar PLC in 1984, just as the government is about to relinquish control and take the company public via an IPO. The primary concern of the CFO is that Jaguar sells over 50% of its cars in the US, while its production costs and factories are U.K.-based. This currency mismatch creates operating exposure for the firm that needs to be hedged.

To find who is bearing the risks of receivables ownership, an analyst should carefully examine the details of the securitization or factoring transactions. Moreover, if the transactions are considered borrowed where the lender does not directly bear the risk of owning the receivable/security, then the ownership risks should be retained by the company. Essentially, companies who are facing different economic realities may choose similar accounting treatment being that it will satisfy the requirement under GAAP

International projects present multinational corporations with many complexities in organizing a profitable transaction structure.Foreign exchange risk is an underlying problem. Credit risk presents another challenge. Payment terms and the certainty of realizing them can be difficult points. Negotiations with foreign corporations and governments, and with agents and intermediaries, present additional challenges. An example of the demanding environment for global financial activities is presented in the case of "Avicular Controls and Pakistan Airlines". It is found in Cases in International Finance on page 40.

The American Institute of Foreign Studies (AIFS) is a company that organizes student exchange programs worldwide with two main divisions. The College Division arranges academic years and semesters or summer schools. The High School Division organizes 1-4 week educational travels for students and teachers. More than 50,000 students participate each year in exchange programs of AIFS, which leads to annual revenues of around $ 200 million. AIFS receives most of its revenues in US-Dollars, whereas most of its costs incur in foreign currencies, mainly in Euros and British Pounds. This is why they use currency hedging in order to protect their bottom line.

Upon examining P&G’s financial ability to meet short-term obligations, it is apparent that not only have their current liabilities exceeded current assets over the last three years, but close to half of their current assets have been tied up in inventories and other illiquid assets. For example, assessing both the quick and current ratio shows that less than 70% of the firm’s quick assets could be converted immediately to pay current commitments, but a little more than 90% of the firm’s liabilities would ultimately be covered. Though, based on industry average similar findings occur; therefore, it must not be uncommon for industries akin to P&G to have

The third question is on of problematic ones, since this question is about quantity of hedging, in other words, how much students company expects for upcoming period, thus expected profit and expenses, hence quantity of contracts that should be purchased.

Chevron operates in the hydrocarbon industry, where it is one of the world's largest companies with sales of $241.9 billion and net income of $26.18 billion. It is the conclusion of this analysis that a creditor should lend Chevron an additional $20.9 billion. The company has the liquidity, solvency and the cash flow to pay back this amount of debt. The company currently finances its operations largely from operating cash flows, with a small amount of long-term debt. This low debt level has left the company with a balance sheet strong enough to withstand a further $20.9 billion in debt. As a lender, it has been found that Chevron meets all of the lending

In case balance sheet items have an efficient management, this can reduce a firm’s NWC. By more collecting receivables in aggressive way, long-term financing method should not be a way that firm may rely on (which may be costly) to fund its operations. Ideally, the current liabilities should cover most of the financing for current assets, and the shareholders equity the rest, from a lenders point of view. (Strischek, 2001)

U.S. Semiconductor, a semiconductor manufacturer decided to expand their business to UK market in 1980. Their new business plan needed specialized technical support facility in UK. In order to minimize the equity investment, they decided to fund their assets mostly with debt. As Semiconductor owned subsidiaries, which spread all over the world, they face great exchange risk. Besides, instead of building a production department in UK, Semiconductor kept producing their products domestically and delivered them to UK by plane. British firms also confronted exchange risk due to the difference between import costs and sales revenues. This case mainly involves the discussion on the method of debt funding.

If the firm’s primary concern is to reduce the costs of financial distress and it can faithfully communicate its true probability of default, the firm should minimise the likelihood of the firm value falling below the market value of debt and/or avoid cash flow shortfall. If hedging is prompted to reduce the demand for costly external finance and the investment volume is independent of the risk factor(s), the firm should perfectly hedge all hedge able risks to minimise cash flow variability. If the firm wants to minimise the demand for external finance and the optimal investment volume is perfectly correlated with the risk factor(s), the firm has a natural hedge and, therefore, does not need to manage risk actively. If external debt has to be raised, the company should minimise contracting costs. To achieve this goal, the firm can faithfully define a conservative risk management policy by bond covenants or reputation building, it can choose preferred stock or convertible debt instead of straight debt and it can constrain its dividend payments. Once the hedging policy is identified, the firm has to trade-off hedging costs and the benefits of hedging (Fok, 1997). The competing approach to value enhancing risk management techniques claims that managers will maximise their expected utility rather than the market value of equity. This approach may have other implications for risk management,