DB 5 Ch 14
Complete the Data Case attached (pages 1 & 2) on Home Depot. This case explores the capital structure of Home Depot Home Improvement stores and the impact of this capital structure on the firm’s WACC. data cases from the textbook, require current market data for their inputs. All market data (e.g., prices, rates, shares outstanding, etc.) must be current and the date the data is retrieved must be included in your analysis. Any solution using data that is more than one week old will receive a grade of 0.
D ata Case You work in the corporate finance division of The Home Depot and your boss has asked you to
review the firms capital structure. Specifically, your boss is considering changing the firm’s debt level.
Your boss remembers something from his MBA program about capital structure being irrelevant, but
isn’t quite sure what that means. You know that capital structure is irrelevant under the conditions
of perfect markets and will demonstrate this point for your boss by showing that the weighted aver-
age cost of capital remains constant under various levels of debt. So, for now, suppose that capital
markets are perfect as you prepare responses for your boss.
You would like to analyze relatively modest changes to Home Depot’s capital structure. You
would like to consider two scenarios: the firm issues $1 billion in new debt to repurchase stock, and
the firm issues $1 billion in new stock to repurchase debt. Use Excel to answer the following ques-
tions using Eqs. 14.5 and 14.6, and assuming a cost of unlevered equity (rU) of 12%.
1. Obtain the financial information you need for Home Depot.
a. Go to www.nasdaqoim, and under “Quotes and Research” click “Summary Quotes.” Enter
Home Depot’s stock symbol (HD) and click “Go Now.” From the Stock Quote 86 Summary
Data page, get the current stock price. Click “Stock Report” in the left column and find the
number of shares outstanding.
b. Click “Income Statement” and the annual income statement should appear. Put the cursor in
the middle of the statement, right-click your mouse, and select “Export to Microsoft Excel.”
(You will not need the income statement until Chapter 15, but collect all of the background data
in one step.) On the Web page, click the Balance Sheet tab. Export the balance sheet to Excel as
well and then cut and paste the balance sheet to the same worksheet as the income statement.
c. To get the cost of debt for Home Depot, go to NASD Bondlnfo (httpz//cxa.marketwarch
com/finra/BondCenter/Defaultnspx). Select the “Corporate” option, enter Home Depot’s
symbol, and click “Search.” The next page will contain information for all of Home Depot’s
outstanding and recently matured bonds. Select the latest yield on an outstanding bond with
the shortest remaining maturity (the maturity date is on the line describing each issue; some-
times the list also contains recently retired bonds, so make sure not to use one of those). Farr
simplicity, since you are just trying to illustrate the main concepts for your boss, you
the existing yield on the outstanding bond as rD. , i?
2. Compute the market D/E ratio for Home Depot. Approximate the market value of debt by the
book value of net th‘bi; inch: ie both Long-Term Debt and Short-Term Debt/ Current Portion of
Long-Term Debt from the balance sheet and subtract any cash holdings. Use the stock price and
number of shares outsmnding to calculate the market value of equity.
3. Compute the cost of levered equity (7-5) For Home Depot using their current market debt-to-
equity ratio and liq. 14.5.
4. Compute the current weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for Home Depot using Eq. 14.6
given their current debt-to-equity ratio.
5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 for the two scenarios you would like to analyze, issuing $1 billion in debt
to repurchase stock, and issuing $1 billion in stock to repurchase debt. (Although you realize that
the cost of debt capital rD may change with changes in leverage, for these modestly small changes
you decide to assume that Q; remains constant. We will explore the relation between changing
leverage and changing rD more fully in Chapter 24.) What is the market D/E ratio in each of
these cases?
5. Prepare a written explanation for your boss explaining the relationship between capital structure
and the cost of capital in this exercise.
7. What implicit assumptions in this exercise generate the results found in Question 5? How might
your results differ in the “real world”?
