Cost of Capital

Assuming the profit margin stays at 5.1% and that operating assets (total assets minus short term investments) maintains at 1996 percentage level of approximately 30% of sales, Dell would require $2,336 million minus $1,555 million, which equals to $779 million.

Our estimated cost of capital, 20.81%, is lower than Ricketts’ expected return, 30%-50%, thus the investment is worthy. However, it’s higher than other pessimistic members’ expected return, 10%-15%, making the decision more complex and requiring further valuation。

The comptroller currently finds the weights for the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) from information from the balance sheet shown in Table 2. Compute the book value weights that the comp­trol­ler currently uses for the company’s capital structure.

The cost of equity was found using CAPM, with the given market risk premium of 5%, a beta of .88, and risk-free rate of 4.03%. The beta was found by running a regression of Southwest’s percent change in stock price versus the S&P 500’s percent change in stock price for two years (June 28, 2000 to June 28, 2002). The risk-free rate was the return on a ten-year treasury note issued on June 28, 2002, according to the U.S. Treasury’s website. The tax rate of 39% was used to account for tax savings from leverage. In order to calculate the firm’s leverage, the market value of equity was found from the price per share on July 24, 2002 (Yahoo Finance) and the shares outstanding on the balance sheet of the July 10-Q report, as shown in Exhibit X. The debt value was approximated at the book value since data could not be found regarding its market value. This analysis resulted in a debt weight of 11.74% and equity weight of 88.26%. The final approximation for the weighted average cost of capital was 8.64%.

* We compared our past and projected ratios to the industry benchmarks to analyze the effects of taking on different levels of debt.

The weights of debt and equity are calculated using the market values of debt and equity as follows:

The mixture of debt-equity mix is important so as to maximize the stock price of the Costco. However, it will be significant to consider the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) as well so that it can evaluate the company targeted capital structure. Cost of capital (OC) may be used by the companies as for long term decision making, so industries that faced to take the important of Cost of capital seriously may not make the right choice by choosing the right project(Gitman’s, ).

1. Determine the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) based on using retained earnings in the capital structure.

At first, WACC and CAPM was attempted to be used as a source of cost of capital. However, for WACC, there is no available proportion of debt and cost of debt for MW. For CAPM, no available data seems to support the acceptable

Moreover, let’s calculate the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC). And in order to calculate it we need to know the capital structure of the company. Knowing the capital structure of the

Should you use book or market value weights? If you want market value of debt use (BV/100) * Price

Thus the cost of capital can be easily calculated using the weighted average cost of capital formula (13.69%).

Weights of Debt and equity are 8.3 and 91.7%. Now, plugging all the values in, we can derive company’s Weighted Average Cost of Capital.

WPC has used a discount rate of 15% to evaluate potential projects for the last 10 years. Many in management are correct in thinking that this rate should be evaluated on a much more frequent basis. The current rate of 15% is much too high considering the yield on treasury bonds has declined from 10% to 5% over the last ten years. In order to calculate the correct discount rate we must first determine what their equity and debt ratios are. As you can see in Exhibit1, in order to find the total value of equity we must multiply the number of total outstanding shares of stock times the market value of each share. Completing this calculation shows us that WPC has $12 billion in outstanding equity. WPC also has $2.5 billion in outstanding debt. If you add the debt and equity together we see that WPC has a total of $14.2 billion in outstanding financing. Assuming the 10 year rate of Government Bonds of 4.60% as our risk free rate and using the Capital Asset Pricing Model we find that that WPC’s return on equity is 11.2% (See Exhibit 1). As stated in the case, Worldwide Paper Company has an A bond rating so we can use the 5.78% for their return on debt. Combining all of these variables in the Weighted Average Cost of

While calculating the Nike’s cost of capital using both the book value (Exhibit 1.1) and the market value (Exhibit 1.2), I could notice the mistake Cohen made finding the equity value. Cohen used the book value to reflect equity value. Although the book value is an accepted measure to estimate the debt value, the equity’s book value is an inaccurate measure of the value perceived by the shareholders. Since Nike is a publicly traded company, market value is the better method in reflecting Nike’s equity value.