Telstra Corporation Limited Analysis And Cost Of Capital Review

Telstra is Australia’s largest and most efficient telecommunications company, which provides one of the best-known brands in the country. They offer a full range of services and compete in all areas of telecommunications both domestically and internationally. Telstra’s vision is to enhance its position as the leading full service telecommunications and information Service Company in Australia as well as to expand its presence internationally. (Telstra Website, 2008)

Liquidity Risk: The liquidity risk of Telstra can be analysed from the help of these two ratios

Because we have not been notified of any substantial changes within the company’s financing agenda or asset acquisition goals, we find it safe to assume that Telus will continue to use the same financing weights in the near future. Another thing that we believe Telus should consider is avoiding the issuance of Preferred Stock in the future. Although this type of stock is less restricted, it can considerably affect the company’s overall cost of capital based on a higher after-tax cost and given that this type of stock is not tax

The future of the telecommunication industry is an exciting future. No longer can these companies depend on telephone service plans to maintain profit. Each company needs to find other avenues, packages and services that can be sold to existing customers while attracting new customers. The companies

This first work term was done at Telus Corporation (also known as TELUS), one of the three major telecommunications companies operating in Canada. The duration of the work term was spent working in the Enterprise Architecture department as a Technology Architecture Assistant, and working with the Wireless Development team as a temporary Software Tester.

From the presentation of the Facts, Telstra has breached the law. They are not the official telecommunication partners of the official technology partners but they are using the

We assume that Telus maintains a fixed debt to equity ratio and hence, the calculation will include preferred shares. 5.00 percent of cost in the past cannot be used towards final calculation

1.0 IntroductionTelstra Corporation is a telecommunications and information services company. It provides a range of services including fixed line services, Internet access, and business services. Telstra is the market leader in the telecommunication industry in Australia, with one of the most prominent brand names. However, its products and operating services face an increasing threat from competitors. An analysis with recommendations of Telstra marketing is necessary in order to improve its performance.

Telstra have dominated the telecommunications market for over a century by providing integrated services with vast geographical coverage. Telstra’s main areas of expertise are providing telephone, mobile, internet services and its 3G network to households and businesses across Australia with 9.2 million fixed line services and 9.7 million mobile services. Telstra have strived to be number one in their industry and achieve ultimate customer satisfaction (Telstra website 2009).

The telecommunications coverage in rural and regional areas in Australia has monopolistic characteristics. Telstra has a competitive advantage over Optus with 99.3% coverage of the population compared to Optus with a 98.5%, this is equivalent to an estimated 192,000 more potential customers. Although Telstra has this competitive advantage they claim that the revenue received from their rural base stations does not cover the cost of development and maintenance.3.

You would not buy a home, car or other large purchases without researching what product offered you the most for your money. The same is true when investing in a company. Investors do avid research on multiple companies to find what company matches the investors' criteria. In this paper Team C will research both AT&T and Verizon's financial documents. Team C will compare selected ratios, cash flow and make recommendations how both companies can manage cash flow for the future.

The market risk premium of 5.5% and the risk free rate of 4.62% (30-year U.S. Treasury) were given in the case. The beta and the pre-tax cost of debt are based on our averaged comparative company analysis. Using the averaged beta of 1.05, the pretax cost of debt of 5.79%, (based on bond ratings) and the weighted average of debt & equity, the telecommunications segmented hurdle rate is calculated at 8.64% (see Exhibit 2).

Telstra has a long history in Australia, starting together with Australia Post as an administration division, the Postmaster-General 's Department. Telstra is now completely privatized and has been going through a change to become more client oriented under its late CEO, David Thodey. New CEO Andy Penn is required to expand the attention on development in universal markets. The central government 's National Broadband Network (NBN) is making changes in the business and will see the organization logically offer its copper and HFC systems to NBN Co.

Looking at the graph above, when Teletech Corp. uses the constant hurdle rate, Telecommunications services which earns 9.1% on capital is underneath of the company’s hurdle rate. Moreover, the P&S which promises to earn 11% on capital is above the company’s hurdle rate. However, the result may be reversed by looking at the graph with adjusted risk hurdle rates. It is clear that company is doing better than they should in the telecommunication segment, because they are getting higher return in comparison to the risk they are taking. On the other hand, P&S segment is not doing as well as it should, because return is getting lower than the risk taken by the company. That is to say, constant and risk-adjusted hurdle rate lead to the different results when Teletech Corp. evaluated its ROR. Implications that company are facing in this strategy are that they are going with the constant hurdle rate for all of its segments, which is not viable. For this reason the company is not adding the extra value of the NPV that these segments are producing and resulting in a lower value for the shareholders.

Using the data in Exhibit 1, we have calculated the WACC for the telecommunications services segment and the products and systems segment of Teletech. The WACC for Telecommunications Services is 8.47%, while it is 11.30% for Products and Services. We used the CAPM model to find the expected return. The average beta and weight of debt for telecommunication services segment are 1.04 and 27.1%, respectively. We pulled this information from the Telecommunications Services industry information in Exhibit 3.