In 2010 the Federal Reserve Board (the Fed) reported that nonfinancial companies in the United States had around $2 trillion in cash and short-term liquid assets. As the U.S. economy was still struggling, consumer spending remained low, and companies resisted in investing in new projects that would create value for their stakeholders.
As the economy improves, uncertainty in the markets decreases, and companies will start investing in projects. However, the challenge of analyzing and selecting projects that would generate cash flows and returns and add value to the firm would remain.
The assumptions in the analysis about cost of equity and debt—overall and for projects—have a significant impact on the type and the value of investments that a company makes.
According to the Association of Finance Professionals’ report, published in 2011 on current trends in estimating and applying the cost of capital, companies use a discount rate that is usually above or below 1% of the company’s true rate. Using this information and certain inputs from the Fed, Michael Jacobs and Anil Shivdasani estimated that a 1% drop in the cost of capital leads U.S. companies to increase their investment by about $150 million over three years.
Based on your understanding of the concept of cost of capital, which of the following statements are valid?
a. Companies always use the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) as the discount rate to analyze the financial viability of projects.
b. A company’s estimate of cost of capital impacts its application in the analysis of new investments that, consequently, affects the value of the firm and shareholders’ wealth.
c. Investors care about the incremental value addition that new projects are making; they are least concerned with the discount rates that the company uses.
d. Companies incorporate the required rate of return in the cost of capital to compensate investors for the components’ risks.