Chapter 22 -- Capital Rationing Capital Market imposed capital rationing Intersects the cost of capital line at a vertical point due to information asymmetry Investors simply may not be willing to provide more money to the company because they do not believe more growth is good We intersperse end-of-chapter problems with PowerPoints to execute our teaching strategy for a particular group of students.
Reasons for Capital Rationing Management policy Common practice – 72% of companies Tool for allocating funds in support of strategy Control problems if more securities are sold Limit risk by limiting growth
Reasons for Capital Rationing Management policy (continued) Belief that competition forces the best projects to the top of the heap Uncertainty about the actual cost of capital Surrogate for dealing with other scarce resources, such as management talent
Capital Rationing and NPV Use the rate over the constrained period and then the cost of capital When NPV conflicts with IRR use the NPV method
Single-period Capital Rationing No capital rationing expected after this year’s selections are made Wealth maximization rule is to allocate scarce capital so as to maximize total NPV using the standard NPV evaluation methods
Multi-period Capital Rationing Allocate capital so as to maximize wealth as of the end of the capital rationing period (TWc) c n TWc = CFt(1+Rt)c-t + CFt/(1+k)t-c – I0(1+R0)t t=1 t=c+1 Where c is the number of periods of capital rationing, CFt is cash flow in period t, Rt is the reinvestment opportunity rate for period t, k is the required return (WACC), and I0 is the initial investment.
Multiperiod Capital Rationing If capital rationing will last as long as proposed investments, cost of capital will remain constant, and reinvestment opportunity rate will remain constant, NPV with capital rationing (NPVR) = n NPVR = CFt/(1+R)t – I0 t=1 Where R is the reinvestment opportunity rate
IRR Rankings in Capital Rationing IRR ranking will lead to correct selection if capital rationing will last as long as the proposed investment, R will be the same each period, and will exceed the cost of capital, and R is the rate of return on the highest rejected investment. Multiple IRRs Dorfman shows that if the project has more than one IRR, the highest IRR is the rate at which capital will grow
Profitability Index and Capitial Rationing Useful only for single-period rationing
Mutually Exclusive Projects and Capital Rationing General solution requires mathematical programming If the company has enough capital this period to accept all investments above the internal reinvestment rate, R, the problem can be simplified to maximizing NPV using R as the discount rate