ii. Company’s annual report (Online)
iii. Reserve Bank of Australia rba.gov.au – go to the statistics link (top right-hand side, click and choose Interest Rates under the Economic and Statistics
Section).
iv. Reference all information and the date of access as part of your reference section in the report.
- Calculate the Weighted Average Cost of Capital using an appropriate technique.
- Explain your calculations and the judgments you made in arriving at your answer.
- Calculate gearing ratios and describe any difficulties in doing so.
- Analyse your findings with reference to capital structure theory.
- Provide a recommendation to the Board on the firm’s current capital structure.
- Provide a reflection on your work and your report in this assessment. In undertaking your reflection you should consider the following (Hint it is helpful to keep notes on your sources of information in
addition to the ones you chose).
a. What weights should you use when calculating the WACC, market value weights, or accounting book values? To do this find the market value of equity (no. of shares times
the share price) and the market value of financial debt (if no traded debt you may need
to use accounting book values) then compare the weight calculations with those
calculated using book values (shareholder funds plus total financial debt). Do they differ
and what would you use?
b. What risk-free rate would you use – 30 days, 3 months, 6 months 1 year, 3 years, 10 years, of 30 years? Would it make a difference?
c. Should you use a published beta such as that available on the Morning Star DataBase (DatAnalysis in the Library), calculate the beta yourself (you can get share
prices and market indexes from Yahoo Finance), or pay someone to do it for you?
d. Do you calculate a return on the market or use the spread between the market and the risk free rate (6% to 8% premium according to research)?
e. Do you use the debt expense as per the accounts or some indicator rate?