...Valuing Financial Service Firms Aswath Damodaran April 2009 Valuing banks, insurance companies and investment banks has always been difficult, but the market crisis of 2008 has elevated the concern to the top of the list of valuation issues. The problems with valuing financial service firm stem from two key characteristics. The first is that the cash flows to a financial service firm cannot be easily estimated, since items like capital expenditures, working capital and debt are not clearly defined. The second is that most financial service firms operate under a regulatory framework that governs how they are capitalized, where they invest and how fast they can grow. Changes in the regulatory environment can create large shifts in value. In this paper, we confront both factors. We argue that financial service firms are best valued using equity valuation models, rather than enterprise valuation models, and with actual or potential dividends, rather than free cash flow to equity. The two key numbers that drive value are the cost of equity, which will be a function of the risk that emanates from the firm’s investments, and the return on equity, which is determined both by the company’s business choices as well as regulatory restrictions. We also look at how relative valuation can be adapted, when used to value financial service firms. 2 Banks, insurance companies and other financial service firms pose special challenges for an analyst attempting to value them,...
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...Choosing Cost versus Fair Value: International Evidence from the European Real Estate Industry Upon Adoption of IFRS Karl A. Muller, III Pennsylvania State University Edward J. Riedl * Harvard Business School Thorsten Sellhorn Ruhr-Universität Bochum PRELIMINARY – PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSION December 2007 ABSTRACT: We examine the determinants of investment property firms’ choice to use the cost or fair value model to account for their primary asset, real estate. Our examination exploits the European Union’s adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards, which require firms to make this choice under IAS 40 – Investment Property. We hypothesize and find evidence that firms are more likely to choose the fair value model when the firm’s pre-IFRS domestic standards permitted or required fair values on the balance sheet, and when the firm exhibits a greater commitment to reporting transparency. We also find limited evidence that firms are more likely to choose the fair value model when ownership is more dispersed, and when the property market in which they operate has higher liquidity. Overall, our results reveal both the occurrence and causes of variation in firms’ reporting choices when differing accounting treatments are permitted. Key Terms: Fair value, accounting choice, IFRS, real estate, investment property, IAS 40 JEL Classification: M41, G15, G38 Acknowledgements: We appreciate useful discussion and data assistance...
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...Lecture Notes for 15.436 International Financial Markets Chapter 6 Why hedge exposure to exchange rates Fall 1999 Raman Uppal 6-2 International Finance: Chapter 6 – Why hedge Fall 1999 Road Map 1 Part A Part B 6 7 8 9 Part C Part D Part E Preliminaries: Conventions, notation, and basic concepts Currency markets and the behavior of the exchange rate Markets for exchange-rate derivatives and the hedging decision Why hedge exposure to exchange rates Measuring and managing exposure to exchange rates The market for currency futures The market for currency options Markets for fixed income securities and the financing decision Markets for equities and the portfolio investment decision Foreign direct investment Fall 1999 International Finance: Chapter 6 – Why hedge 6-3 Contents 6.1 Main issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Motivating problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Implications of empirical evidence on exchange rate behavior . 6.4 When is value of a firm independent of its hedging policy 6.5.1 6.5.2 6.5.3 6.5.4 6.5.5 4 5 6 7 9 10 15 17 22 23 . . 6.5 How can hedging increase the value of a firm . . . . . . . . . Corporate hedging reduces costs of financial distress . . . . . . . . “Home-made” hedging is not an efficient substitute for corporate hedging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hedging reduces agency costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hedging...
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...The Risks of Preferred Stock Portfolios SLCG Working Paper 1 Abstract Preferred stocks are a hybrid of debt and equity. In this paper, we examine preferred stocks with an emphasis on the risks of holding portfolios of preferred stocks. We demonstrate that preferred stocks are similar to debt when the issuing company is financially healthy, and become more similar to equity when the company’s financial condition deteriorates. We show that issuers of preferred stocks are heavily concentrated in the financial services industry, a fact that exposes investors who hold a portfolio concentrated in preferred stocks to further risk - industry concentration risk. We illustrate the features of preferred stocks using the Fannie Mae 2008 issuance as a case study. I. Characteristics of Preferred Stocks Preferred stocks are a hybrid of debt and equity and have attributes of both securities. In an issuing company’s capital structure, they give investors a claim to income and assets before common equity investors but after debt holders. Preferred stocks pay a stream of fixed- or floating-rate payments similar to the coupon payments made on debt and provide no participation in the issuer’s residual gains or any voting rights. However, similar to dividend-paying equity, preferred stocks’ dividend payments are not a mandatory obligation of the issuer. Failure to pay preferred stock dividends does not constitute a default. Historically, most preferred stocks were cumulative, meaning that...
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...A Study on Leverage and Firm Investment: Chinese Evidence Master of Science Thesis Huijie Bao Program Economics of Innovation and Growth Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) June 2010 Supervisor: Börje Johansson ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on the relationship between financial leverage and investment in Chinese listed firms. There are two novel aspects embraced here. One is choosing a marginal version of Tobin’s q instead of average q with Chinese data. Another one is taking the financial sector in to consideration. The research covers all sectors in the Chinese stock market. Main outcomes are listed below. Leverage imposes negative effects on investment, especially on non-state owned firms. Like Financials, Manufacturing and other highly regulated sectors, the inverse impacts of debt are week as well. However, marginal q fails in proof under the specific environment of the Chinese capital market which is still immature. High-leveraged firms experienced reverse influences of marginal q on investment. To sum up, over-debt financing indeed blocks the sustained investment. Relatively speaking, state owned firms in China suffer less since they are supported by the government and have fewer restrictions. Key words: financial leverage, marginal q, gross investment and state owned firms 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Firstly, I would like to express my strong gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Börje Johansson, whose profound knowledge, guidance and patience, greatly enhanced...
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...LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT Report on Capstone Project “Impact of financial risk on capital structure decision in cement industry of India” Submitted to Lovely Professional University In partial fulfilment of the Requirements for the award of Degree of Master of Business Administration Supervisor: Mr. Rohit Bansal Submitted by: Shalini Sahay 10808654 Khalid Anwar 10805151 Suman Saurabh 10808885 Varun Kakkar 10810014 Gurpreet Singh 10806126 DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY JALANDHAR NEW DELHI GT ROAD PHAGWARA PUNJAB 1 CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the project report titled “Impact of financial risk on capital structure in cement industry of India” carried out by Miss. Shalini sahay has been accomplished under my guidance & supervision as a duly registered MBA student of the Lovely Professional University, Phagwara. This project is being submitted by him/her in the partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the Master of Business Administration from Lovely Professional University. Her dissertation represents her original work and is worthy of consideration for the award of the degree of Master of Business Administration. ___________________________________ (Name & Signature of the Faculty Advisor) Date: 2 CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the project report titled “Impact of financial risk on capital structure in cement industry of India” carried out by Mr.Khalid anwar has been...
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...Journal Of Financial And Strategic Decisions Volume 10 Number 3 Fall 1997 STRATEGIC ASSETS, CAPITAL STRUCTURE, AND FIRM PERFORMANCE Rahul Kochhar* Abstract Possession of strategic assets is a necessary condition for sustained competitive advantage. This condition is, however, not sufficient. Firms require financial management capability to realize the rents present in their strategic assets. The firm-specific nature of strategic assets implies that they be financed primarily through equity; other less specific assets should be financed through debt. Firms are likely to suffer increased costs and decreased performance if they do not adopt suitable governance structures in their transactions with potential suppliers of funds. INTRODUCTION The recently developed “resource-based view of the firm” seeks to focus the attention of researchers and managers alike on the unique and hard-to-copy strategic assets of the firm [7, 61]. Firms earn economic rents from these assets when there is an initial level of asymmetry in resource endowments, there is imperfect mobility of these assets, the market for these assets is imperfect, and competitors cannot easily obtain similar assets [2, 6, 7, 20, 24, 48]. Strategic assets provide the firm with a source of steady stream of rents so that it gains a sustained competitive advantage over its rivals. While researchers in this area have a general agreement over the characteristics of strategic assets (albeit adopting slightly different terminology...
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...global financial services firm, which has been negatively impacted by a national investment crisis and plans to release to its target audience and stakeholders, utilizing tools such as Mary Munter’s Audience Strategy. The stakeholders have been identified as the firm’s employees, customers, shareholders, and the financial regulators. The shared common concerns of this group are the financial health of XYZ global financial services firm balance sheet, and the plans to meet regulatory obligations and compliance, and the lessons learned from the national investment crisis and plans for risk management. In addition, it will discuss the recommendation of three areas that as the new CEO of XYZ global financial services firm needs to focus and apply to influence the values of the firm and prevent a future crises by creating a culture of candor, trust, and learning. Introduction Values are beliefs that people have about what is important or worthwhile to them. Values influence behavior because people seek more of what they value. Values therefore can be seen as the guideposts for behavior. An individual’s values are in large part, derived from the social environment in which he or she lives. For example, in Western democracies, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are some of the things we value. Similarly, our home life, our friends, and fraternal societies we join, experiences obtaining an education, and the companies we work for, may influence our value frameworks...
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...First, although it is not clear whether non-financial liabilities should be considered debt, they should never be considered as equity. Yet, the common financial-debt-to-asset ratio (FD/AT) measure of leverage commits this mistake. Thus, research on increases in FD/AT explains, at least in part, decreases in non-financial liabilities. Future research should avoid FD/AT altogether. The paper also quantifies the components of the balance sheet of large publicly traded corporations and discusses the role of cash in measuring leverage ratios. Second, equity-issuing activity should not be viewed as equivalent to capital structure changes. Empirically, the correlation between the two is weak. The capital structure and capital issuing literature are distinct. I. INTRODUCTION Leverage is defined as the sensitivity of the value of equity ownership with respect to changes in the underlying value of the firm. Empirically, leverage ratios are frequently independent variables (sometimes as part of a hypothesis, sometimes as a control). Leverage ratios are also the dependent variable in the empirical capital structure literature. This literature tries to explain variations in corporate leverage, both in the cross section of capital structure (i.e. why some firms have high leverage) and in the time series (how capital structures evolve). In the theory of capital structure, one common hypothesis derives directly from the equity-sensitivity channel: a firm with more leverage has both higherpowered incentives...
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...Investment Management and Financial Innovations, Volume 7, Issue 2, 2010 Faris Nasif Al-Shubiri (Jordan) Analysis of the relationship between working capital policy and operating risk: an empirical study on Jordanian industrial companies Abstract The study analyzes the working capital management practices and their impact on profitability and risk of industrial Jordanian firms for the period of 2004 to 2007. The total sample of the study consists of 59 industrial firms listed on Amman Stock Exchange. The working capital management practices examine the impact of aggressive/conservative working capital investment and financing policy and analyze through cross-sectional regression models the relationship between working capital policies and profitability as well as risk of the firms. Efficient management of working capital is a fundamental part of the overall corporate strategy aiming to create the shareholders’ value. Firms try to keep an optimal level of working capital that maximizes their value. The optimal level of working capital is determined to a large extent by the methods adopted for the management of current assets and liabilities. It requires continuous monitoring to maintain proper level in various components of working capital, i.e. cash receivables, inventory and payables, etc. The result indicates a negative relationship between the profitability measures of firms and degree of aggressiveness of working capital investment and financing policy. The firms yield negative returns...
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...Tradicional Finance a) If the NPV of the project is positive, the firm should undertake the investment. b) Base in the formula I = E + S we can demonstrate what is the best decision for the company. For that we will make a numerical example. State 1 State 2 Asset-in.place a 150 50 Investment Opportunity (NPV) b 20 10 P' I Debt (D) Lot of cash S E True Value (V) P'+E V V old new = = = 115 150 0 115 150 0 = = = = = 100 50 320 165 100 50 210 165 = 223,03 146,36 96,97 63,64 Little cash S E True value (V) P'+E V V old new = = = = 30 120 320 235 30 120 210 235 = 156,60 102,77 = 163,40 107,23 S↗ S↘ Payoff V in state 1 V in state 2 old old Issue & Invest (E=50) 223,03 146,36 Issue & Invest (E=120) 156,60 102,77 Do nothing (E=0) 150 50 With this example we can easily state that more cash bring more value to the old stockholders and most importantly, to the firm. c) Retained earnings – could avoid to issues stocks (assumption: the firm only uses risk-free borrowing to reduce the required investment and the investors are passive). “Firms should go to bond markets for external capital, but raise equity by retention if possible.” (Page 219 of the paper). Firms can build up financial slack by restricting dividends when investment requirements are modest. The cash saved is held as marketable securities or reserve borrowing power. Debt – makes possible to create value through tax benefits and by the non-necessity of revealing proprietary...
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...FIN 316 Ch. 1: Corporate Finance and the Financial Manager Types of firm * Sole proprietorship * Straightforward to set up * No separation between the firm and the owner; the firm can have only one owner who runs the business * Owner has unlimited personal liability for the firm’s debts * Limited to the life of the owner * Partnership * All partners are liable for the firm’s debt * Ends in the event of the death or withdrawal of any single partner * Limited partnership: a partnership with two kinds of owners, general partners and limited partners * General partners: same rights and privileges as partners in any general partnership * Limited partners: limited liability, the death or withdrawal of a limited partner does not dissolve the partnership, and no management authority * Limited liability company * Like a limited partnership but without a general partner * Owners have limited liability * Unlike limited partners, owners can run the business * Corporation * A legally defined, artificial being, separate from its owners * Must be legally formed * No limit on the number of owners; ownership stake of a corporation is divided into shared known as stock * Limited liability * Owners cannot manage the firm but they legally may * S corporation: at most 100 owners, personal taxation * C corporation: unlimited owners, double taxation Financial manager * Make investment decisions ...
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...Levels and Income Components for Determining Firm Value Hashem Valipour Assistant Professor, Accounting Department, Firouzabad Branch Islamic Azad University, Firouzabad, Iran Tel: 00989173086986 E-mail: h.valipour@gmail.com Alireza Shahabi Accounting Department, Marvdasht Branch Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran E-mail: arshahaby@gmail.com Javad Moradi Assistant Professor, Accounting Department, Marvdasht Branch Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran E-mail: jmoradi2005@yahoo.com Abstract Income levels and its components which are presented in income statement, are the first criteria for assessing financial operation, users are quite interested in this criterion. So investigating the effect of this attraction on firm value is important. The present paper studies this matter. Statistical population is listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). Based on considered preconditions 49 companies selected over 1999 to 2008 and classified into three groups based on their size, small, medium and large. Regression has used for analyzing data. Findings indicate that income level and components prepare relevant information for users. Other findings show that considering firm size has negligible impact on value relevance of income level and components. Keywords: Income Statement, Relevant, Firm Value, Firm Size, Income Component. 1. Introduction Market value relevance means that there is a statistical association between financial information and stock prices or returns,...
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...1. Introduction Accounting practices have been argued to reflect information quality of the firm in the market. Recently, there has been renewed interest in the relation between information asymmetry and conservative financial reporting practices. Many theorists have critiqued this aspect of information asymmetry, which has garnered significant interest in the accounting arena in the world today. This paper is set out to analyze the literature on conservative financial reporting, dissecting Akerlof’s article surrounding information asymmetry. Following this, possible motivations by firms to undertake these accounting measures will be meted out, coupled with an examination of the empirical evidence in reflection of the measurement of conservatism, with a final conclusion pertaining the relationship of information quality and financial reporting choices being ascertained. 2. Conservative Financial Reporting Conservatism is the differential verifiability required for the recognition of accounting gains versus losses that generates an understatement of net assets. (Basu, 1997) There has been evidence strongly suggesting that U.S companies had used conservative financial reporting practices since the last five decades. (Watts, 2003) It is argued that conservatism of financial reporting arises because of information asymmetry between firm managers and shareholders. While information asymmetry refers to a situation where one party has more or superior information compared to another...
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...Costs of Financial Distress 16.1 Good Time Company is a regional chain department store. It will remain in business for one more year. The probability of a boom year is 60% and a recession is 40%. It is projected that Good Time will generate a total cash flow of $250 million in a boom year and $100 million in a recession. The firm’s required debt payment at the end of the year is $150 million. The market value of Good Time’s outstanding debt is $108.93 million. Assume a one-period model, risk neutrality, and an annual discount rate of 12% for both the firm’s debt and equity. Good Time pays no taxes. a. What is the value of the firm’s equity? b. What is the promised return on Good Time’s debt? c. What is the value of the firm? d. How much would Good Time’s debt be worth if there were no bankruptcy costs? e. What payoff, after bankruptcy costs, do bondholders expect to receive in the event of a recession? f. What cost do bondholders expect Good Time to incur should bankruptcy arise at the end of the year? 16.2 Steinberg Corporation and Dietrich Corporation are identical firms except that Dietrich is more levered. Both companies will remain in business for one more year. The companies’ economists agree that the probability of a recession next year is 20% and the probability of a continuation of the current expansion is 80%. If the expansion continues, each firm will generate earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of $2 million...
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