Notes: Repurchasing Shares and Issuing New Debt

Issuing additional debt to finance the company expansion would worsen the company’s debt ratio as it is already more than average. The company envisions to be profitable by raising capital from existing stockholders by issuing common stock through rights offering.

Our company will plan to finance our strategy principally through issuing stock and cash flows from operating activities generated from the company’s normal business functions. It is undesirable for our strategy to issue debt because we would like to stay away from interest payments. Our company anticipates our debt to equity leverage ratio to be around 0.5.

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.

o Cost of debt in this case is 12.5% though MCI can raise $ 100 million more with this option in comparison to option (a) above. Servicing this debt would be a significant drain on the cash flow. o Please see Exhibit 3. (c) $600 million Convertible offering @ 7.625% 20 year with conversion at 54 per share o Using this option MCI can raise $ 100 million more than option (b) at 4.88% lower rate of interest. It also gives MCI an option to convert it to equity once the stock price reaches 54 (it is currently 47). Based on previous convertible offerings (As per exhibit 6 of case, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1982), MCI has been converting it to equity within 18 months because of its high growth. As higher growth is projected for the next few years (Exhibit 9 of case), MCI is expected to convert this $600 million offering to equity, thereby reducing its leverage. o This option allows to finance its current activities and match capital inflows with expected investment outlays in the near future. It also allows MCI the option to eliminate the cash flow drain from servicing the debt once the stock price increases. o As per Exhibit 3 attached here, this offering will provide capital to meet the external financing needs for 1983.

In general, using external funds, i.e. debt or equity, to finance increasing growth is riskier to the corporation. When issuing debt the company needs to be certain to cover both the repayment of the principal and the interest payments on time (because if they do not this could cause them to have problems securing financing in the future). When issuing additional shares of stock (equity) the value of existing traded stock is diluted (in proportion) and as such the current ownership might lose control (and may even be voted out by shareholders if dilution is substantial enough). Furthermore, with both debt and equity financing, a fast growing company needs to be aware that payments to either may hamper future expansion because payments that need to be send out in the forms of dividends or interest cannot be retained and invested in future projects.

Leverage can increase a firm’s expected earnings per share. An argument is that by doing so, leverage should also increase the firm’s stock price. Because BBBY

What are the advantages of leveraging this company? The disadvantages? How would leveraging up affect the company’s taxes? How would the capital markets react to a decision by the company to increase the use of debt in its capital structure?

Aside from the two aforementioned proposals the company can raise its leverage in other ways. By conducting DuPont analysis and understanding operating leverage we see that purchasing fixed assets and decreasing stockholder’s equity will raise the equity multiplier and the firm’s operating leverage. In this instance we recommend against this approach as the firm already has a large amount of excess cash above what they require to fund new positive NPV projects and purchase new assets. Investors would rather see their capital returned to them in the form of share repurchases and dividends as it is evident by the company’s cash stockpile that they can

Repurchasing shares with a 40% debt to total capital ratio would increase shareholder value, however repurchasing shares with an 80% debt to total capital ratio would significantly decrease shareholder value and therefore would not be advisable. Increasing debt increases shareholder value to a certain point. As this proforma shows, the point of diminishing return is somewhere between 40% and 80%.

Based upon the firm’s low target leverage of 5%, low degree of operating leverage, and favorable credit history and financial outlook, the model assumes a cost of debt in line with AAA corporate debt at 7.02%. This estimate seems reasonable and sensitivity analysis shows a 1% decrease in the forecasted share price requires at least a 2.4% increase in the cost of debt.

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.

Increased leverage would increase the risk for the shareholder. This is due to the fact that an increased amount of debt would increase the financial return that investors expect. For example, if a company has no debt and posts better than expected earnings, the equity holder would get all of this benefit. If the company had some debt and posted better than expected earnings, the bond holders would get a fixed payment as usual, and shareholders would still enjoy increased profits; the problem arises if worse than expected profits were shown by Kelly Services. If Kelly Services had no debt and posted bad earnings, then the equity bears all the risk in that situation. However, if Kelly

Target Corporation is having a very stable financial policy and dividend policy. From the historical financial data, Target had debt $11,044M, $11,202M, $10,599M, $17,471M, and $19,882M in the year of 2005,2006,2007,2008, and 2009 respectively. The long-term debt/equity ratio rises from 69.34% to 108%.

The company lost money almost every year since its leveraged buyout by Coniston Partners in 1989. The income generated was not sufficient to service the interest expenses of the company which stood at $2.62B in 1996. From Exhibit 1, we can say that interest coverage ratio computed as EBIT / Interest Expense was 1.31 in 1989 and has been decreasing over years and currently stands at 0.59. This raises a question of how the company can meet its interest payments without raising cash or selling assets.

Shares outstanding decrease as the firm takes on more debt. The reason being is that the firm buys back shares with the newly acquired cash from issuing debt.