Value of Money My SLP Company Is Case Study

Value of Money

My SLP company is Wal-Mart. For me I would pay less than $100,000 for this bond, because I know that the $100,000 face value of the bond is not going to have the same purchasing power in a year as it does today. The value of the bond will therefore be less than $100,000, based on the prevailing interest rate. Wal-Mart is a company with a high amount of cash flow that is quite reliable. Thus it is not expected that Wal-Mart would pay much in the way of interest, maybe 2% per year. This implies the value of the bond would be around $98,000.

The discount rate for this bond, based on a $98,000 price, would be 2.04%, as calculated by ($100,000 -- 98,000) / 98000. This reflects the return that the bond offers to the investor.

Target is a company in the same industry as Wal-Mart. I would pay less for a Target bond. Target is a stable enough company, but it does not have the same level of stability and diversification as Wal-Mart does. Therefore I would demand a risk premium for a Target bond, and that risk premium is going to mean that I will pay less for that bond, and therefore earn a bigger return, than I would for Wal-Mart. I would pay $97,000 for a Target bond, which gives a return of (100,000 -- 97,000) / 97,000 = 3.09%.When one considers the things you want in a company when evaluating debt, you want to see stable cash flows, a lack of long-term debt and a healthy liquidity position. Wal-Mart is an excellent company in this regard, so there are not too many competitors of Wal-Mart that are actually more attractive. One that does have greater appeal is Amazon. While Wal-Mart is one of the largest online retailers, Amazon dominates this space. It has billions in cash, and its revenues are increasing significantly every year -- a 27% improvement last year. Thus I would pay more for an Amazon bond as I feel that company is even more reliable than Wal-Mart, because it is the number one in the industry and growing at such a large rate that other companies cannot even compete any more. I would pay $99,000 for an Amazon bond, which gives me a return of 1.01% for the year, not much more than what you would get on a Treasury bond.

Part II.

The debt to equity ratio for Wal-Mart is 1.66, as calculated by $126,762 / $76,343.

The debt to equity ratio for Target is $31,605 / $16,558 = 1.908

The debt to equity ratio for Amazon is $24,363 / $8,192 = 2.97

The financial figures for these three companies are as follows:

Wal-Mart

Target

Amazon

Profit Margin

3.61

3.27

0.19

ROA

8.62

5.03

0.48

ROE

24.09

14.84

1.59

Beta

0.41.....