The Oceanic Corporation (Determining the Cost of Capital)

I do not think it is proper. Since hurdle rate is the key factor to determine whether we should accept a project, it is concerned with a specific investment opportunity belonging to a division. As we can see in Table 1, each of Midland`s divisions had its own target debt ratio. Those

The cost of equity is the theoretical return that equity investors expect or receive from the company for investing their funds in the company. The risk free rate that is the Government Treasury bill rate is 3.1%, the market risk premium is 7% and the beta has been calculated as

This view implies that a single hurdle rate may deprive an under profitable division of investments in order to channel more funds into a more profitable division. While this is sound logic, certain situation exist where projects will go unfunded that do create value to the company.

Midland should not rely on a single corporate hurdle rate for evaluating investment opportunities across all divisions because each division is subject to fundamentally different forces such as political volatility, and high future expenditures. For example, R&E is expected to have capital expenditures in excess of $8 billion over the years 2007 and 2008 while worldwide refining capabilities are expected to decrease leading to possible investments in this division of Midland. The Exploration and Production division faces an entirely different set of challenges as oil reserves become more difficult to reach as in the case of arctic and deep water drilling operations, and consequently more expensive to exploit. In addition, political instability has become increasingly prevalent in investment considerations as oil production in areas such as the Middle East and Africa have grown. Civil and political upheaval in these regions threatens disruption of oil production and lead to greater volatility of prices (pg.2).

The risk premium used is 7.43% though it seems to be high, low free rate compensates it.

Hurdle rates, the weighted cost of capital that projected cash flows must exceed for initiatives to be considered, vary within Marriott Corporations due to their unique industry risk levels and capital structures. They use this number to determine which projects to accept, to adjust the rate at which the firm grows and as a measure for compensation within each business area, and as incentive compensation.

Cost of Equity = Risk free rate + (Market return – risk free rate) X beta

Although, it is true that lower hurdle rates would translate into high growth projects, but including it in Manager’s compensation plan might lead to agency problem where managers may try to manipulate the hurdle rates in order to get the projects through and make money.

We assumed an asset beta of 1.15 (the median asset beta of the three comparable companies) and a debt beta of 0 (with no interest bearing debt) for Project Achieve. Using the 30-year treasury rate (5.94%) as the risk-free rate because of Project Achieve’s expected life and a historical 7.0% market risk premium, we calculated Project Achieve’s discount rate at 14.0%. This discount rate values Achieve as a public company, comparable to its public counterparts. As a non-public start-up, however, Project Achieve is far more risky than the more established comparables discussed above. Thus, we added a 5% start-up risk premium to reach an appropriate 19% discount rate for the valuation of Project Achieve. (See Exhibit #1)

We added the market risk premium of 6% to the 4.60% because 6% is the rate that investors want above the risk free rate due to the risk of the investment. This equals 10.6% which is then multiplied by the beta of the company of 1.1. Beta is a measure of the stock’s volatility in relation to the market. A beta of 1.1 means that Worldwide Paper Company has slightly higher volatility than the market does. The total cost of equity then calculates to equal 11.2%. This tells us that given the risk taken in investing in the company, a shareholder should expect an 11.2% return.

Marriot use the Weighted Average Cost of Capital to estimate the cost of capital for the corporation as a whole and for each division, and the hurdle rate is updated annually.(WACC = (1-Tc) * (D/A) * R[D] + (E/A) * R[E])

In general, differentiation in hurdle rates between projects with different types of risks is preferable. If all projects with different types of risk will have the same hurdle rates, managers would probably choose the most risky project, due to higher expected returns. This in turn would also drive the divisional beta up. Therefore, it seems to be justified to make a distinction in hurdle rates depending on the level of risk involved. That means that managers also take projects with lower risk into consideration. However, it cannot be said with certainty if the adjustment factors need to be exactly 0.9 or 1.2. Nevertheless, the spread between the adjustment factors should not be too wide, in order not to neglect profitable projects or accept unprofitable ones.

Unida Systems has 40 million shares outstanding trading for $10 per share. In addition, Unida has $100 million in outstanding debt. Suppose Unida’s equity cost of capital is 15%, its debt cost of capital is 8%, and the corporate tax rate is 40%.

One of the problems with divisional rates, as the advocates for the single rate contend, is that the categories suggested were not helpful in grouping projects by their risk. Although the use of multiple divisional hurdle rates may capture the appropriate discount rate for most projects (given that most projects among the division carry similar characteristics), a more accurate determinant for evaluating projects within a division would be to use multiple discount rates based on individual projects. Assuming that all projects within a division carry the same risk may potentially lead to projects being accepted or rejected in an inappropriate manner. Similar to the case in which one corporate discount rate is used, projects that are riskier than average would be mistakenly accepted and low risk project would be rejected. A situation in which this would occur would be in the volatile tanker industry, which proved to be devastating for many companies in the industry. Under divisional rates Pioneer would evaluate tanker investments under the transportation division, which has a much lower discount rate than is realistic for high-risk tanker investments.

One of the problems with divisional rates, as the advocates for the single rate contend, is that the categories suggested were not helpful in grouping projects by their risk. Although the use of multiple divisional hurdle rates may capture the appropriate discount rate for most projects (given that most projects among the division carry similar characteristics), a more accurate determinant for evaluating projects within a division would be to use multiple discount rates based on individual projects. Assuming that all projects within a division carry the same risk may potentially lead to projects being accepted or rejected in an inappropriate manner. Similar to the case in which one corporate discount rate is used, projects that are riskier than average would be mistakenly accepted and low risk project would be rejected. A situation in which this would occur would be in the volatile tanker industry, which proved to be devastating for many companies in the industry. Under divisional rates Pioneer would evaluate tanker investments under the transportation division, which has a much lower discount rate than is realistic for high-risk tanker investments.