Capital budgeting involves decisions about whether or not to invest in fixed assets, and it has a major influence on firms’ future performances and values. Discounted cash flow analysis is used in capital budgeting, and a key element of this procedure is the discount rate used in the analysis. Capital must be raised to finance fixed assets, and this capital comes from different sources: debt, preferred stock, and common equity. Each of these capital components has a cost, and these cost rates, along with the target proportions of each, are used to calculate the firm’s weighted average cost of capital or “WACC.”
Go to http://ro.uow.edu.au/commpapers/317/. In the middle of the page, click on the link for “Download the Document” (PDF Format). This will open a new document in Adobe Acrobat. Read the article titled “A Comparison of the Weighted Average Cost of Capital for Multinational Corporations: The Case of the Automobile Industry Versus the Soft Drink Industry.”
After you have completed the above, answer the following question:
Identify some problem areas in the cost of capital analysis. Do these problems invalidate the cost of capital procedures we are discussing in this unit?
