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In corporate finance, capital structure refers to the mix of various forms of external funds, known as capital, used to finance a business. It consists of shareholders' equity, debt (borrowed funds), and preferred stock, and is detailed in the company's balance sheet. The larger the debt component is in relation to the other sources of capital, the greater financial leverage (or gearing, in the United Kingdom) the firm is said to have. Too much debt can increase the risk of the company and reduce its financial flexibility, which at some point creates concern among investors and results in a greater cost of capital. Company management is responsible for establishing a capital structure for the corporation that makes optimal use of financial leverage and holds the cost of capital as low as possible. [1] [2]
Capital structure is an important issue in setting rates charged to customers by regulated utilities in the United States. The utility company has the right to choose any capital structure it deems appropriate, but regulators determine an appropriate capital structure and cost of capital for ratemaking purposes. [3]
Various leverage or gearing ratios are closely watched by financial analysts to assess the amount of debt in a company's capital structure. [4] [5]
The Miller and Modigliani theorem argues that the market value of a firm is unaffected by a change in its capital structure. This school of thought is generally viewed as a purely theoretical result, since it assumes a perfect market and disregards factors such as fluctuations and uncertain situations that may arise in financing a firm. In academia, much attention has been given to debating and relaxing the assumptions made by Miller and Modigliani to explain why a firm's capital structure is relevant to its value in the real world. [6]
Up to a certain point, the use of debt (such as bonds or bank loans) in a company's capital structure is beneficial. When debt is a portion of a firm's capital structure, it permits the company to achieve greater earnings per share than would be possible by issuing equity. This is because the interest paid by the firm on the debt is tax-deductible. The reduction in taxes permits more of the company's operating income to flow through to investors. The related increase in earnings per share is called financial leverage or gearing in the United Kingdom and Australia. Financial leverage can be beneficial when the business is expanding and profitable, but it is detrimental when the business enters a contraction phase. The interest on the debt must be paid regardless of the level of the company's operating income, or bankruptcy may be the result. If the firm does not prosper and profits do not meet management's expectations, too much debt (i.e., too much leverage) increases the risk that the firm may not be able to pay its creditors. At some point this makes investors apprehensive and increases the firm's cost of borrowing or issuing new equity. [7] [8]
It is important that a company's management recognizes the risk inherent in taking on debt, and maintains an optimal capital structure with an appropriate balance between debt and equity. [9] An optimal capital structure is one that is consistent with minimizing the cost of debt and equity financing and maximizing the value of the firm. Internal policy decisions with respect to capital structure and debt ratios must be tempered by a recognition of how outsiders view the strength of the firm's financial position. [10] Key considerations include maintaining the firm's credit rating at a level where it can attract new external funds on reasonable terms, and maintaining a stable dividend policy and good earnings record. [11]
Once management has decided how much debt should be used in the capital structure, decisions must be made as to the appropriate mix of short-term debt and long-term debt. Increasing the percentage of short-term debt can enhance a firm's financial flexibility, since the borrower's commitment to pay interest is for a shorter period of time. But short-term debt also exposes the firm to greater refinancing risk. Therefore, as the percentage of short-term debt in a firm's capital structure increases, equity holders will expect greater returns on equity to compensate for the increased risk, according to a 2022 article in The Journal of Finance. [12]
In the event of bankruptcy, the seniority of the capital structure comes into play. A typical company has the following seniority structure listed from most senior to least:
In practice, the capital structure may be complex and include other sources of capital.
Financial analysts use some form of leverage ratio to quantify the proportion of debt and equity in a company's capital structure, and to make comparisons between companies. Using figures from the balance sheet, the debt-to-capital ratio can be calculated as shown below. [17]
debt-to-capitalization ratio = dollar amount of debt/ dollar amount of total capitalization |
The debt-to-equity ratio and capital gearing ratio are widely used for the same purpose.
capital gearing ratio = dollar amount of capital bearing risk/ dollar amount of capital not bearing risk |
Capital bearing risk includes debentures (risk is to pay interest) and preference capital (risk to pay dividend at fixed rate). [18] Capital not bearing risk includes equity. [19]
Therefore, one can also say, Capital gearing ratio = (Debentures + Preference share capital) : (shareholders' funds) [20]
Capital structure is an important issue in setting rates charged to customers by regulated utilities in the United States. Ratemaking practice in the U.S. holds that rates paid by a utility's customers should be set at a level which assures that the company can provide reliable service at reasonable cost. The cost of capital is among the costs a utility must be allowed to recover from customers, and depends on the company's capital structure. The utility company may choose whatever capital structure it deems appropriate, but regulators determine an appropriate capital structure and cost of capital for ratemaking purposes. [21]
The Modigliani–Miller theorem, proposed by Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller in 1958, forms the basis for modern academic thinking on capital structure. It is generally viewed as a purely theoretical result since it disregards many important factors in the capital structure process factors like fluctuations and uncertain situations that may occur in the course of financing a firm. The theorem states that, in a perfect market, how a firm is financed is irrelevant to its value. This result provides the base with which to examine real world reasons why capital structure is relevant, that is, a company's value is affected by the capital structure it employs. Some other reasons include bankruptcy costs, agency costs, taxes, and information asymmetry. This analysis can then be extended to look at whether there is in fact an optimal capital structure: the one which maximizes the value of the firm.[ citation needed ]
Consider a perfect capital market (no transaction or bankruptcy costs; perfect information); firms and individuals can borrow at the same interest rate; no taxes; and investment returns are not affected by financial uncertainty. Assuming perfections in the capital is a mirage and unattainable as suggested by Modigliani and Miller.
Modigliani and Miller made two findings under these conditions. Their first 'proposition' was that the value of a company is independent of its capital structure. Their second 'proposition' stated that the cost of equity for a leveraged firm is equal to the cost of equity for an unleveraged firm, plus an added premium for financial risk. That is, as leverage increases, risk is shifted between different investor classes, while the total firm risk is constant, and hence no extra value created.[ citation needed ]
Their analysis was extended to include the effect of taxes and risky debt. Under a classical tax system, the tax-deductibility of interest makes debt financing valuable; that is, the cost of capital decreases as the proportion of debt in the capital structure increases. The optimal structure would be to have virtually no equity at all, i.e. a capital structure consisting of 99.99% debt.
If capital structure is irrelevant in a perfect market, then imperfections which exist in the real world must be the cause of its relevance. [22] The theories below try to address some of these imperfections, by relaxing assumptions made in the Modigliani–Miller theorem. [23]
Trade-off theory of capital structure allows bankruptcy cost to exist as an offset to the benefit of using debt as tax shield. It states that there is an advantage to financing with debt, namely, the tax benefits of debt and that there is a cost of financing with debt the bankruptcy costs and the financial distress costs of debt. [24] This theory also refers to the idea that a company chooses how much equity finance and how much debt finance to use by considering both costs and benefits. [25] The marginal benefit of further increases in debt declines as debt increases, while the marginal cost increases, so that a firm optimizing its overall value will focus on this trade-off when choosing how much debt and equity to use for financing. [26] Empirically, this theory may explain differences in debt-to-equity ratios between industries, but it doesn't explain differences within the same industry. [27]
Pecking order theory tries to capture the costs of asymmetric information. [28] It states that companies prioritize their sources of financing (from internal financing to equity) according to the law of least effort, or of least resistance, preferring to raise equity as a financing means "of last resort". [29] Hence, internal financing is used first; when that is depleted, debt is issued; and when it is no longer sensible to issue any more debt, equity is issued. This theory maintains that businesses adhere to a hierarchy of financing sources and prefer internal financing when available, and debt is preferred over equity if external financing is required (equity would mean issuing shares which meant 'bringing external ownership' into the company). [30] Thus, the form of debt a firm chooses can act as a signal of its need for external finance. [31]
The pecking order theory has been popularized by Myers (1984) [32] when he argued that equity is a less preferred means to raise capital, because when managers (who are assumed to know better about true condition of the firm than investors) issue new equity, investors believe that managers think the firm is overvalued, and managers are taking advantage of the assumed over-valuation. As a result, investors may place a lower value to the new equity issuance.
The capital structure substitution theory is based on the hypothesis that company management may manipulate capital structure such that earnings per share (EPS) are maximized. [33] The model is not normative i.e. and does not state that management should maximize EPS, it simply hypothesizes they do.
The 1982 SEC rule 10b-18 allowed public companies open-market repurchases of their own stock and made it easier to manipulate capital structure. [34] This hypothesis leads to a larger number of testable predictions. First, it has been deducted[ by whom? ] that market average earnings yield will be in equilibrium with the market average interest rate on corporate bonds after corporate taxes, which is a reformulation of the 'Fed model'. The second prediction has been that companies with a high valuation ratio, or low earnings yield, will have little or no debt, whereas companies with low valuation ratios will be more leveraged. [35] When companies have a dynamic debt-equity target, this explains why some companies use dividends and others do not. A fourth prediction has been that there is a negative relationship in the market between companies' relative price volatilities and their leverage. This contradicts Hamada who used the work of Modigliani and Miller to derive a positive relationship between these two variables.
Three types of agency costs can help explain the relevance of capital structure.
An active area of research in finance is[ when? ] that which tries to translate the models above as well as others into a structured theoretical setup that is time-consistent and that has a dynamic set up similar to one that can be observed in the real world. Managerial contracts, debt contracts, equity contracts, investment returns, all have long lived, multi-period implications. Therefore, it is hard to think through what the implications of the basic models above are for the real world if they are not embedded in a dynamic structure that approximates reality. A similar type of research is performed under the guise of credit risk research in which the modeling of the likelihood of default and its pricing is undertaken under different assumptions about investors and about the incentives of management, shareholders and debt holders. Examples of research in this area are Goldstein, Ju, Leland (1998) [38] and Hennessy and Whited (2004). [39]
In addition to firm-specific characteristics, researchers find macroeconomic conditions have a material impact on capital structure choice. Korajczyk, Lucas, and McDonald (1990) provide evidence of equity issues cluster following a run-up in the equity market. [40] Korajczyk and Levy (2003) find that target leverage is counter-cyclical for unconstrained firms, but pro-cyclical for firms that are constrained; macroeconomic conditions are significant for issue choice for firms that can time their issue choice to coincide with periods of favorable macroeconomic conditions, while constrained firms cannot. [41] Levy and Hennessy (2007) highlight that trade-offs between agency problems and risk sharing vary over the business cycle and can result in the observed patterns. [42] Others have related these patterns with asset pricing puzzles. [43]
Corporate leverage ratios are initially determined. Low relative to high leverage ratios are largely persistent despite time variation. Variation in capital structures is primarily determined by factors that remain stable for long periods of time. These stable factors are unobservable. [44]
Firms rationally invest and seek financing in a manner compatible with their growth types. As economic and market conditions improve, low growth type firms are keener to issue new debt than equity, whereas high growth type firms are least likely to issue debt and keenest to issue equity. Distinct growth types are persistent. Consistent with a generalized Myers–Majluf framework, growth type compatibility enables distinct growth types and hence specifications of market imperfection or informational environments to persist, generating capital structure persistence. [45]
A capital structure arbitrageur seeks to profit from differential pricing of various instruments issued by one corporation. Consider, for example, traditional bonds, and convertible bonds. The latter are bonds that are, under contracted-for conditions, convertible into shares of equity. The stock-option component of a convertible bond has a calculable value in itself. The value of the whole instrument should be the value of the traditional bonds plus the extra value of the option feature. If the spread (the difference between the convertible and the non-convertible bonds) grows excessively, then the capital-structure arbitrageur will bet that it will converge.[ citation needed ]
A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loans, along with the assets of the acquiring company. The use of debt, which normally has a lower cost of capital than equity, serves to reduce the overall cost of financing the acquisition. This is done at the risk of magnified cash flow losses should the acquisition perform poorly after the buyout.
The weighted average cost of capital (WACC) is the rate that a company is expected to pay on average to all its security holders to finance its assets. The WACC is commonly referred to as the firm's cost of capital. Importantly, it is dictated by the external market and not by management. The WACC represents the minimum return that a company must earn on an existing asset base to satisfy its creditors, owners, and other providers of capital, or they will invest elsewhere.
Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public. In the field of finance, private equity is offered instead to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the companies. In casual usage, "private equity" can refer to these investment firms, rather than the companies in which that they invest.
The Modigliani–Miller theorem is an influential element of economic theory; it forms the basis for modern thinking on capital structure. The basic theorem states that in the absence of taxes, bankruptcy costs, agency costs, and asymmetric information, and in an efficient market, the enterprise value of a firm is unaffected by how that firm is financed. This is not to be confused with the value of the equity of the firm. Since the value of the firm depends neither on its dividend policy nor its decision to raise capital by issuing shares or selling debt, the Modigliani–Miller theorem is often called the capital structure irrelevance principle.
Adjusted present value (APV) is a valuation method introduced in 1974 by Stewart Myers. The idea is to value the project as if it were all equity financed ("unleveraged"), and to then add the present value of the tax shield of debt – and other side effects.
In finance, the yield on a security is a measure of the ex-ante return to a holder of the security. It is one component of return on an investment, the other component being the change in the market price of the security. It is a measure applied to fixed income securities, common stocks, preferred stocks, convertible stocks and bonds, annuities and real estate investments.
In economics and accounting, the cost of capital is the cost of a company's funds, or from an investor's point of view is "the required rate of return on a portfolio company's existing securities". It is used to evaluate new projects of a company. It is the minimum return that investors expect for providing capital to the company, thus setting a benchmark that a new project has to meet.
In finance, leverage, also known as gearing, is any technique involving borrowing funds to buy an investment.
A company's debt-to-equity ratio (D/E) is a financial ratio indicating the relative proportion of shareholders' equity and debt used to finance the company's assets. Closely related to leveraging, the ratio is also known as risk, gearing or leverage. The two components are often taken from the firm's balance sheet or statement of financial position, but the ratio may also be calculated using market values for both, if the company's debt and equity are publicly traded, or using a combination of book value for debt and market value for equity financing.
The return on equity (ROE) is a measure of the profitability of a business in relation to its equity; where:
In corporate finance, the pecking order theory postulates that "firms prefer to finance their investments internally, using retained earnings, before turning to external sources of financing such as debt or equity" - i.e. there is a “pecking order” when it comes to financing decisions. The theory was first suggested by Gordon Donaldson in 1961 and was modified by Stewart C. Myers and Nicolas Majluf in 1984.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:
In corporate finance, Hamada’s equation is an equation used as a way to separate the financial risk of a levered firm from its business risk. The equation combines the Modigliani–Miller theorem with the capital asset pricing model. It is used to help determine the levered beta and, through this, the optimal capital structure of firms. It was named after Robert Hamada, the Professor of Finance behind the theory.
Management is a type of labor with a special role of coordinating the activities of inputs and carrying out the contracts agreed among inputs, all of which can be characterized as "decision making". Managers usually face disciplinary forces by making themselves irreplaceable in a way that the company would lose without them. A manager has an incentive to invest the firm's resources in assets whose value is higher under him than under the best alternative manager, even when such investments are not value-maximizing.
Financial innovation is the act of creating new financial instruments as well as new financial technologies, institutions, and markets. Recent financial innovations include hedge funds, private equity, weather derivatives, retail-structured products, exchange-traded funds, multi-family offices, and Islamic bonds (Sukuk). The shadow banking system has spawned an array of financial innovations including mortgage-backed securities products and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).
A financial ratio or accounting ratio states the relative magnitude of two selected numerical values taken from an enterprise's financial statements. Often used in accounting, there are many standard ratios used to try to evaluate the overall financial condition of a corporation or other organization. Financial ratios may be used by managers within a firm, by current and potential shareholders (owners) of a firm, and by a firm's creditors. Financial analysts use financial ratios to compare the strengths and weaknesses in various companies. If shares in a company are publicly listed, the market price of the shares is used in certain financial ratios.
In finance, the capital structure substitution theory (CSS) describes the relationship between earnings, stock price and capital structure of public companies. The CSS theory hypothesizes that managements of public companies manipulate capital structure such that earnings per share (EPS) are maximized. Managements have an incentive to do so because shareholders and analysts value EPS growth. The theory is used to explain trends in capital structure, stock market valuation, dividend policy, the monetary transmission mechanism, and stock volatility, and provides an alternative to the Modigliani–Miller theorem that has limited descriptive validity in real markets. The CSS theory is only applicable in markets where share repurchases are allowed. Investors can use the CSS theory to identify undervalued stocks.
Dividend policy, in financial management and corporate finance, is concerned with the policies regarding dividends; more specifically paying a cash dividend in the present, as opposed to, presumably, paying an increased dividend at a later stage. Practical and theoretical considerations will inform this thinking.
Corporate finance is the area of finance that deals with the sources of funding, and the capital structure of businesses, the actions that managers take to increase the value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and analysis used to allocate financial resources. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize or increase shareholder value.
The Merton model, developed by Robert C. Merton in 1974, is a widely used "structural" credit risk model. Analysts and investors utilize the Merton model to understand how capable a company is at meeting financial obligations, servicing its debt, and weighing the general possibility that it will go into credit default.
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