Corporate Finance
　　This study session covers the principles that corporations use to make their investing and financing decisions. The first reading covers capital budgeting. Capital budgeting is the process of making decisions about which long-term projects the corporation should accept for investment and which it should reject. Both the expected and required rate of return for a project should be taken into account. The second read?ing explains how the required rate of return for a project is developed economically sound methods. The third reading discusses measures of leverage and how they affect a company’s earnings and financial ratios. In managing or *uating the riskiness of earnings, analysts and corporate managers need to *uate operating leverage (the use of fixed costs in operations) and financial leverage (the use of debt in financing operations). The fourth reading deals with important features of alternative means of distributing earnings. Earnings may be distributed to shareholders by means of dividends and share repurchases. The fifth reading discusses short-term liquidity and working capital management.
　　The final reading in this study session is on corporate governance practices. Inadequate corporate governance can expose a company to negative effect, including damage to reputation and loss of business and market value.
　　READING ASSIGNMENTS
　　Reading 36 Capital Budgeting by John D. Stowe, CFA, and Jacques R. Gagné, CFA, CIPM
　　Reading 37 Cost of Capital by Yves Courtois, CFA, Gene C. Lai, and Pamela Peterson Drake,CFA
　　Reading 38 Measures of Leverage by Pamela Peterson Drake, CFA, Raj Aggarwal, CFA, Cynthia Harrington, CFA, and Adam Kobor, CFA
　　Reading 39 Dividends and Share Repurchases: Basics by George H. Troughton, CFA, and Gregory Noronha, CFA
　　Reading 40 Working Capital Management by Edgar A. Norton, Jr., CFA, Kenneth L. Parkinson, and Pamela Peterson Drake, CFA
　　Reading 41 The Corporate Governance of Listed Companies: A Manual for Investors by Kurt Schacht, CFA, James C. Allen, CFA, and Matthew Orsagh.
　　LEARNING OUTCOMES
　　READING 36. CAPITAL BUDGETING
　　The candidate should be able to:
　　a describe the capital budgeting process, including the typical steps of the pro?cess, and distinguish among the various categories of capital projects;
　　b describe the basic principles of capital budgeting, including cash flow estimation;
　　c explain how the *uation and selection of capital projects is affected by mutu?ally exclusive projects, project sequencing, and capital rationing;
　　d calculate and interpret the results using each of the following methods to *uate a single capital project: net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), payback period, discounted payback period, and profitability index (PI);
　　e explain the NPV profile, compare the NPV and IRR methods when *uating independent and mutually exclusive projects, and describe the problems associ?ated with each of the *uation methods;
　　f describe expected relations among an investment’s NPV, company value, and share price.
　　READING 37. COST OF CAPITAL
　　The candidate should be able to:
　　a calculate and interpret the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) of a company;
　　b describe how taxes affect the cost of capital from different capital sources;
　　c explain alternative methods of calculating the weights used in the WACC, including the use of the company’s target capital structure;
　　d explain how the marginal cost of capital and the investment opportunity sched?ule are used to determine the optimal capital budget;
　　e explain the marginal cost of capital’s role in determining the net present value of a project;
　　f calculate and interpret the cost of debt capital using the yield-to-maturity approach and the debt-rating approach;
　　g calculate and interpret the cost of noncallable, nonconvertible preferred stock;
　　h calculate and interpret the cost of equity capital using the capital asset pricing model approach, the dividend discount model approach, and the bond-yield-plus risk-premium approach;
　　i calculate and interpret the beta and cost of capital for a project;
　　j describe uses of country risk premiums in estimating the cost of equity;
　　k describe the marginal cost of capital schedule, explain why it may be upward-sloping with respect to additional capital, and calculate and interpret its break-points;
　　l explain and demonstrate the correct treatment of flotation costs.
　　READING 38. MEASURES OF LEVERAGE
　　The candidate should be able to:
　　a define and explain leverage, business risk, sales risk, operating risk, and finan?cial risk, and classify a risk, given a description;
　　b calculate and interpret the degree of operating leverage, the degree of financial leverage, and the degree of total leverage;
　　c describe the effect of financial leverage on a company’s net income and return on equity;
　　d calculate the breakeven quantity of sales and determine the company's net income at various sales levels;
　　e calculate and interpret the operating breakeven quantity of sales.
　　READING 39. DIVIDENDS AND SHARE REPURCHASES: BASICS
　　The candidate should be able to:
　　a describe regular cash dividends, extra dividends, stock dividends, stock splits, and reverse stock splits, including their expected effect on shareholders’ wealth and a company’s financial ratios;
　　b describe dividend payment chronology, including the significance of declara?tion holder-of-record, ex-dividend, and payment dates;
　　c compare share repurchase methods;
　　d calculate and compare the effect of a share repurchase on earnings per share when 1) the repurchase is financed with the company’s excess cash and 2) the company uses debt to finance the repurchase;
　　e calculate the effect of a share repurchase on book value per share;
　　f explain why a cash dividend and a share repurchase of the same amount are equivalent in terms of the effect on shareholders’ wealth, all else being equal.
　　READING 40. WORKING CAPITAL MANAGEMENT
　　The candidate should be able to:
　　a describe primary and secondary sources of liquidity and factors that influence a company’s liquidity position;
　　b compare a company’s liquidity measures with those of peer companies;
　　c *uate working capital effectiveness of a company based on its operating and cash conversion cycles, and compare the company’s effectiveness with that of peer companies;
　　d describe how different types of cash flows affect a company’s net daily cash position;
　　e calculate and interpret comparable yields on various securities, compare portfo?lio returns against a standard benchmark, and *uate a company’s short-term investment policy guidelines;
　　f *uate a company’s management of accounts receivable, inventory, and accounts payable over time and compared to peer companies;
　　g *uate the choices of short-term funding available to a company and recom?mend a financing method.
　　READING 41. THE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE OF LISTED COMPANIES: A MANUAL FOR INVESTORS
　　The candidate should be able to:
　　a define corporate governance;
　　b describe practices related to board and committee independence, experience, compensation, external consultants, and frequency of elections, and determine whether they are supportive of shareowner protection;
　　c describe board independence and explain the importance of independent board members in corporate governance;
　　d identify factors that an analyst should consider when *uating the qualifica?tions of board members;
　　e describe responsibilities of the audit, compensation, and nominations com?mittees and identify factors an investor should consider when *uating the quality of each committee;
　　f explain provisions that should be included in a strong corporate code of ethics;
　　g *uate, from a shareowner’s perspective, company policies related to voting rules, shareowner sponsored proposals, common stock classes, and takeover defenses.
　　　
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