In this paper, we revisit a frequently employed simplification within the WACC approach that company cost of capital kV is supposed to be invariant to the debt ratio and therefore equal to the unlevered cost kU . Even though we know from Miles and Ezzell (1980) that kV formally differs from kU ,...

The tax shield as present value of debt-related tax savings plays an important role in firm valuation. Driving the risk of future debt levels, the firm’s strategy to adjust the absolute debt level to future changes of the firm value, labeled as (re-) financing policy, affects the value of tax...

This paper presents three different approaches for calculating the levered annual values for a finite cash flow profile. In the first approach, we use K_U, the return to unlevered equity to calculate the annual tax savings and use K_U to calculate the (present) value of the tax savings. In the...

De- and re-levering betas is important to obtain discount rates for assets that are not publicly traded. A de- and re-levering procedure is around for the case of risk-free debt. The procedure for risky debt is much less clear even under very simplifying assumptions. In this paper, I concretize...

This paper shows that forward default intensities in the Black and Cox (1976) model of corporate default can be expressed in terms of the Mills Ratio (Mills, 1926). The behavior of the forward default intensity and hence the survivorship functions then follows from inequalities that are...

This paper analyzes whether the financial distress of a firm affects the investment decisions of non-distressed competitors. On average, firms in distress impose indirect costs to non-distressed competitors by increasing costs of credit in the industry and hence restricting credit access and...

Traditional firm valuation discounts forecasted cash consequences that are understood as expected values under some scenario. It is not clear how, and to what extent, uncertainty is incorporated in the valuation. This paper constructs a new valuation model where uncertainty, in particular,...

To value shares there are two usual methods that, if properly applied, provide the same value: 1/ Present value of expected free cash flows (FCF) discounted with the WACC rate and then, subtract the value of debt; and 2/ Present value of expected equity cash flows (ECF) discounted with the Ke...