Describing Gearing and Its Importance in Capital Structure of a Company

2) The higher ratio of Debt to Total Equity may result to the lower of the debt credit rating. The lower of the credit rating will result to increase of the interest rate which will cost more to the company.

Many risks occur when gaining wealth, such as debt. People of high risk of often assume debts is not a problem for them. They begin to assume that they can pay back debt loans when they get more money, putting themselves further in debt even more than before. Recurrently, they will remain

1. to preclude the company from trading out of its temporary insolvency, thus resulting in creditors not being fully paid in respect of their debt; and

United States, the courts look at whether there was an identity of interest between creditors and shareholders and the timing of the advances during the corporation’s organization. They test for a debtor-creditor relationship based off a enforceable obligation to pay a fixed amount of money. They look at the motivation of the taxpayer to see if the advances were made for ulterior tax purposes. If repayment was contingent upon the success of the company advances were made toward, it would be more than likely considered equity than loans. This case also adds that because no promises were made to repay at a fixed interest rate or certain time, and did not pay interest and gave no security for the advances made, the case sees the taxpayers as the sole shareholders gaining equity in the

However, two known authors in this field of study believe that companies with low business risk obtains factors of production at a lower cost which may also pave to the ability of the firm to operate more efficiently (Amit & Wernerfet, 1990). Therefore, many stockholders faced a high of uncertainty; this is because some companies do not have the financial strengths to cover its debts that even may result to bankruptcy.

Any profits remaining after deducting operating costs, interest payments, taxation, and dividend are reinvested in the business and regarded as part of the equity capital. The finance manager will monitor the long-term financial structure by examining the relationship between loan capital, where interest and loan repayments are contractually obligatory, and ordinary share capital, where dividend payment is at the discretion of directors. This is known as gearing. There are two basic types of gearing, they are capital gearing which indicates the proportion of debt capital in the firm’s overall capital structure; and income gearing indicates the extent to which the company’s income is pre-empted by prior interest charges. Both are indicators of financial gearing.

Despite this change in price, the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) will give a more accurate representation of what the change in capital structure implies for the firm, by taking account the costs of debt.

The purpose of the report is to understand the capital structure of the chosen company on the basis of the financial statements of the company which includes the income statement, balance sheet and the cash flow statement of the company and do the capital analysis of the company as well to find out the advantages and disadvantages in working capital of the company and suggest company logical and useful ways for growing their economy.

If the firms funding requirements are larger than their retained earnings, they must issue debt as this is preferred to issuing equity. Based on this theory, a firm’s financing policies could be viewed as signalling management’s view of the firm’s stock value (Wang & Lin 2010).Myers and Majluf (1984) also add that if firms issued no new securities but only used its retained earning to support the investment opportunities, the information asymmetric could be resolved. This suggests that issuing equity turn out to be more expensive as asymmetric information insiders and outsiders increase. Large firms should then issue debt to avoid selling under priced securities. As the requirement for external financing increases, businesses will work down the pecking order, from safe to riskier debt, perhaps to convertible securities or preferred stock, and finally to equity as a last resort. Each firm's debt ratio therefore reflects its cumulative requirement for external financing (Myers 2001).The pecking order theory clarifies why the bulk of external financing comes from debt. It also describes why organizations that are more profitable borrow less: since their goal debt ratio is, low-in the pecking order they do not have a goal since profitable firms have more internal financing available.

From this set of problems, we can see that leverage is good for the firm. Leverage has increased the value of the firm as a whole and increased the price per share. Although the cost of debt increases the firm's risk because it increases the probability of default and bankruptcy, therefore shareholders will require higher rates of return on the equity they provide, debt also provides tax savings. And we can see that in table 4, where we calculated the total value of the firm as the pure business cash flows plus the tax savings. Another reason why debt increases firm value is the fact that it reduces WACC, because the cost of debt is generally lower than the cost of equity. Another option that shareholders can do is using homemade leverage. Shareholders should pay a premium for the shares of a levered firm when the addition of debt increases value.

As negative aspects of debt, e.g. personal tax loss and bankruptcy costs however do exist in reality, Miller (1977) elaborates that leverage will either have no or a negative effect on the firm’s value, hence untaxed firms should favor equity.

This section starts with the theory of irrelevancy of capital structure. Following subsections give the overview of theories that suggest that the capital

For example, if the public thinks that the firm’s prospects are rosy but the managers see trouble ahead, these managers would view their debt-as well as their equity-as being overvalued. That is, the public might see the debt as nearly risk- free, whereas the mangers see a strong possibility of default.

* Thus decision to use preferred stock or debt exposes the common stockholders to financial risk.

In finance, capital structure refers to the way a corporation finances its assets through some combination of equity, debt, or hybrid securities. A firm 's capital structure is then the composition or 'structure ' of its liabilities. Simply, capital structure refers to the mix of debt and equity used by a firm in financing its assets. The capital structure decision is one of the most important decisions made by financial management. The capital structure decision is at the center of many other decisions in the area of corporate finance. These include dividend policy, project financing, issue of long term securities, financing of mergers, buyouts and so on. One of the many objectives of