Question

You were hired as a consultant to restructure operating capital. The recommended goal is for the firm to have a capital structure is 33% debt, 8% preferred, and 59% common equity. The interest rate on new debt is 6.50%, the yield on the preferred is 6.00%, the cost of retained earnings is 11.25%, and the tax rate is 28%. The firm will not be issuing any new stock. The firm's projected WACC is ______%

Answer 1

The WACC is 8.66%

Step-by-step explanation:

The WACC or weighted average cost of capital is the cost to firm of its capital structure which can have 3 components namely debt, preferred stock and common stock. We take the weighted average of these components and their respective costs to calculate WACC. Furthermore, we take the after tax cost of debt for WACC calculation and that is why we multiply the cost of debt by (1-tax rate).

WACC = wD * rD * (1-tax rate) + wP * rP + wE * rE

WACC = 0.33 * 0.065 * (1-0.28) + 0.08 * 0.06 + 0.59 * 0.1125

WACC = 0.086619 or 8.86619% rounded off to 8.66%