COST OF CAPITAL - DEFINITIONS Cost of capital is one rate of return the capital funds used should produce to justify

their use within the firm. i) According to Solomon Ezra, the cost of capital is the minimum required rate of earnings of the cut off rate for capital expenditure. ii) In the words of Haley and Schall, in a general sense, cost of capital is any discount rate used to value cash streams. iii) According to James C. Vanhorne, the cost of capital represents a cut off rate for the allocation of capital investment of projects. It is the rate of return on a project that will have unchanged the market price of the stock. COST OF CAPITAL SIGNIFICANCE The determination of the firm's cost of capital is important from the point of view of both capital budgeting as well as capital structure planning decisions. i) Capital budgeting decisions. In capital budgeting decisions, the cost of capital is often used as a discount rate on the basis of which the firm's future cash flows are discounted to find out their present values. Thus, the cost of capital is the very basis for financial appraisal of new capital expenditure proposals. The decision of the finance manager will be irrational and wrong in case the cost of capital is not correctly determined. This is because the business must earn least at a rate which equals to its cost capital in order to make at least a break-even. ii) Capital structure decisions. The cost of capital is also an important consideration in capital structure decisions. The finance manager must raise capital from different sources in a way that it optimises the risk and cost factors. The sources of funds which have less cost involve high risk. Raising of loans may, therefore, be cheaper on account of income tax benefits, but it involves heavy risk because a slight fall in the earning capacity of the company may bring the firm near to cash insolvency. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary that cost of each source of funds is carefully considered and compared with the risk involved with it. In order to compute the overall cost of capital, the manager of funds has to take the following steps: i) To determine the type of funds to be raised and their share in the total capitalization of the firm. ii) To ascertain the cost of each type of funds. iii) To calculate the combined cost of capital if the firm by assigning weight to each type of funds in terms of quantum of funds so raised. COST OF PREFERENCE SHARE CAPITAL A security sold in a market place promising a fixed rupee return per period is known as a preference share or preferred stock. Dividends on preferred stock are cumulative in the sense that if the firm is unable to pay when promised by it, then these keep on getting accumulated until paid, and these must be paid before dividends are paid to ordinary shareholders. The rate of dividend is specified in case of preference shares. Preference shares are of two kinds: the redeemable and irredeemable preference shares. In case of redeemable preference shares the period of repayment is specified, while for irredeemable ones this is not done.

The important difference in the true cost of debentures and preference shares must be noted. Interest on debentures is considered as an expense by tax authorities and is, therefore, deducted from company's income fortax purposes. That is why the true cost of debentures is the after tax cost. On the other hand, the dividends are paid to preference shareholders after the company has paid tax on its income (including that portion of income which is to be paid to preference shareholders). Therefore, the true cost of preference capital is the before tax cost which may be found as : Cp (before tax) = Rate of dividend [ 1 / (1 corporate tax rate)] x 100 For example, if dividend rate is 10% and a corporate tax 65%, the cost of preference capital is: Cp = 0.10 [1 / (1 0.65)] x 100 = 28.6%. COST OF EQUITY CAPITAL Cost of this source of capital is very difficult to measure. Many methods have been suggested, but no method is clearly the best. Here, three popular approaches for estimating cost of equity capital are presented. Like preference capital, cost of equity capital is also calculated before-cost, as tax does not affect this cost. Method I. The Risk-Free Rate Plus Risk Premium. Since the equity holders are paid only after the debt servicing is done, it is generally found that investment is equity is riskier in than investment in bonds. Therefore, an investor will demand a return on equity (re) which will consist of: (i) a risk free return usually associated with return on government bonds, plus (ii) a premium for additional risk. There are two sources of risk which affect the risk premium: (1) The additional risk undertaken by investing in private securities rather than government securities. (2) The risk of buying equity stock rather than bond of a private firm. The first type of risk is calculated by taking a difference between the interest on firm's bonds and on government bonds. For the second type of risk, a rule of thumb is used. Based on their judgement, the financial analysts have come to believe that the return on firm's equity is about 3 to 5 per cent more than that on the debt. We may take its mid-point (i.e., 4 per cent) as an estimate of premium for second type of risk. Now, suppose risk free rate is 10 per cent and firm's bond yield 15 per cent, the total risk premium (p) can be calculated as: p = (0.15 0.10) + 0.04 =0.09 The firm's cost of equity capital (Cg) (which is the sym of risk-free return plus premium for additional risk) would, therefore, be Ce = 0.10 + 0.09 = 0.19, or 19 per cent. Method II. Dividend Valuation Method. This is also known as Dividend Growth Model. The underlying logic of this method is the same as the internal rate of return method of evaluating investments. According to this method, the cost of equity capital is that discount rate which equates the current market price of the equity (P) with the sum of present value of expected dividends. That is,

D1 D2 Dn P = --------- + ------------- + ----------- + .. (1+Ce) (1+Ce)2 (1+Ce)n where D1, D2 .. are dividends expected during each time period (1,2,...) and Cg is the cost of equity or the discount rate. The basic problem here is that all the shareholders would have different expectations. This method of calculating the cost of equity would, therefore, need an assumption that all investors have exactly similar dividend expectations. Another problem relates to the determination of future stream of expected dividends. In order to overcome this problem, it has been suggested that we should assume a constant growth rate in dividend. Let D0 be the current dividend, Dn be the dividend in year n, and g be the constant growth rate of dividend. Then, Dn = D0 (1+g)n Therefore D0(1+g) D0 (1+g)2 D0(1+g)n P = ----------- + ------------- + ------------ + .. (1+Ce) (1+Ce)2 (1+Ce)n

METHOD III: CAPITAL ASSET PRICING MODEL (CAPM). This approach is based on the principle that risk and return of an investment are positively correlatedmore risky the investment, higher are the desired returns. This model emphasizes not only the risk differential between equity (or common stock) and government bond but also risk differential among various common stocks. The P coefficient is used as a risk-index. It measures relative risk among stocks. The beta coefficient may be defined as "the ratio of variability in return on a given stock to variability in return for all stocks," The P is calculated by regression analysis, using regression equation kia = + kim, where kia is the return on equity of firm a in the ith period and kim is the return on all equity in the market in the ith period. The estimated value of is known as the beta coefficient. A beta coefficient of value 1.0 means the stack's return is as volatile or risky as the market's, > 1 and < 1 means the stock's return are more volatile and less volatile respectively compared to the return on total stock market portfolio. In this model the cost of equity capital (re) is: re = Rf + (rm- Rf) where, Rf refers to risk free rate and r^ to return on market portfolio. Here cost of equity capital is composed of two components : (1) the risk-free rate (Rf), and (2) the weighted risk component where (rm Rf) refers to the overall risk premium, while the risk associated with the firm in question () is used as weights. COST OF RETAINED EARNINGS The part of income which a firm is left with after paying interest on debt capital and dividend to its shareholders is called retained earnings. These also involve cost in the sense that by withholding the distribution of part of income to shareholders the firms is denying them the opportunity to invest these funds elsewhere and earn income. In this sense the cost of retained earnings is the opportunity cost. It must be noted that retaining the earnings is equal to forcing the shareholders to increase their equity position in the firm by that amount. But retained earnings are cheaper when it is realised that shareholders would have to pay personal tax on the additional dividends, if distributed. Retained earnings avoid the payment of personal

income tax on dividends and the brokerage fee connected with any reinvestment. However, the amount to be paid as personal income tax differs from shareholder to shareholder, depending upon the tax bracket to which he belongs. Thus, before-tax cost of retained earnings (Cre) and before-tax cost of equity capital (Ce) are equal; but once the impact of tax is also included then the cost of retained earnings is less than the cost of equity capital, the difference being the personal income tax. For example, assume that the company has Rs. 100 of retained earnings and that there is a uniform personal income tax rate of 30 per cent. This means that if to shareholders are distributed Rs. 100 of retained earnings, their income would in fact increase by Rs. 70 (= Rs. 100 - Rs. 30). In other words, the after-tax opportunity cost of retained earnings is Rs. 70. Or, the cost of retained earnings is about 70% of the cost of equity capital. Though the cost of retained earnings is always lower than cost of equity capital, a company can depend upon this source of finance only to the extent of availability of funds and willingness of shareholders. The cost of retained earnings can be stated with the help of the following formula : E ( 1 Tp) Cre = ------------------- x 100 MP where, Cre is the cost of retained earnings; E is the earnings per equity; Tp is the personal income tax; and MP is the market price of the share. WEIGHTED AVERAGE COST OF CAPITAL The weighted average cost of capital (WACC) is used in finance to measure a firm's cost of capital. It had been used by many firms in the past as a discount rate for financed projects, since using the cost of the financing seems like a logical price tag to put on it Companies raise money from two main sources: equity and debt. Thus the capital structure of a firm comprises three main components: preferred equity, common equity and debt (typically bonds and notes). The WACC takes into account the relative weights of each component of the capital structure and presents the expected cost of new capital for a firm The formula The weighted average cost of capital is defined by C = (E/K) y + (D/K) b (1 Xc) Where, K=D+E The following table defines each symbol Symbol Meaning C weighted average cost of capital Y required or expected rate of return on equity, or cost of equity B required or expected rate of return on borrowings, or cost of debt Xc corporate tax rate D total debt and leases E total equity and equity equivalents K total capital invested in the going concern

Units % % % % currency currency currency

This equation describes only the situation with homogeneous equity and debt. If part of the capital consists, for example, of preferred stock (with different cost of equity y), then the formula would include an additional term for each additional source of capital How it works Since we are measuring expected cost of new capital, we should use the market values of the components, rather than their book values (which can be significantly different). In addition, other, more "exotic" sources of financing, such as convertible/callable bonds, convertible preferred stock, etc., would normally be included in the formula if they exist in any significant amounts - since the cost of those financing methods is usually different from the plain vanilla bonds and equity due to their extra features Sources of information How do we find out the values of the components in the formula for WACC? First let us note that the "weight" of a source of financing is simply the market value of that piece divided by the sum of the values of all the pieces. For example, the weight of common equity in the above formula would be determined as follows Market value of common equity / (Market value of common equity + Market value of debt + Market value of preferred equity) So, let us proceed in finding the market values of each source of financing (namely the debt, preferred stock, and common stock) The market value for equity for a publicly traded company is simply the price per share multiplied by the number of shares outstanding, and tends to be the easiest component to find The market value of the debt is easily found if the company has publicly traded bonds. Frequently, companies also have a significant amount of bank loans, whose market value is not easily found. However, since the market value of debt tends to be pretty close to the book value (for companies that have not experienced significant changes in credit rating, at least), the book value of debt is usually used in the WACC formula The market value of preferred stock is again usually easily found on the market, and determined by multiplying the cost per share by number of shares outstanding Now, let us take care of the costs Preferred equity is equivalent to perpetuity, where the holder is entitled to fixed payments forever. Thus the cost is determined by dividing the periodic payment by the price of the preferred stock, in percentage terms The cost of common equity is usually determined using the capital asset pricing model The cost of debt is the yield to maturity on the publicly traded bonds of the company. Failing availability of that, the rates of interest charged by the banks on recent loans to the company would also serve as a good cost of debt. Since a corporation normally can write off taxes on the interest it pays on the debt, however, the cost of debt is further reduced by the tax rate that the corporation is subject to. Thus, the cost of debt for a company becomes (YTM on bonds or interest on loans) (1 tax rate). In fact, the tax deduction is usually kept in the formula for WACC, rather than being rolled up into cost of debt, as such WACC = weight of preferred equity cost of preferred equity

+ weight of common equity cost of common equity + weight of debt cost of debt (1 tax rate) Key words Cost of capital. It is the rate of return the firm must earn on its assets to justify the using and acquiring of investible resources. Capital asset pricing model (CAPM). This model is based on the premise that degree of risk and returns are related. Relative risks among stocks is measured using the beta coefficient. coefficient > 1 means the variation in returns on that stock is greater than that of the average stock. coefficient is a necessary element in determining a stock's required rate of return. Dividend valuation method. According to this method, the return required by the investor is equal to the current dividend yield on the common stock plus an expected growth rate for dividend payments. It is also known as dividend growth model. Weighted average cost of capital. Weights are given in proportion to each source of funds in the capital structure; then weighted average cost of capital is calculated. Payback period. A method of evaluating investment proposal which determines the time a project's cash inflows will take to repay the original investments of the project. Average rate of return. Also known as the accounting rate of return (ARK), return on investment (ROT) or return on assets (ROA), is obtained by dividing average annual post-tax profit by the average investment. Discount rate. The rate at which cash flows are discounted. This rate may be taken as the requiredrate of return on capital, or the cost of capital. Internal rate of return. The IRR is a method of evaluating investment proposals. It is that rate of discount (or interest rate) that equals the present value of outflows to the present value of inflows, thus making NPV=Q.