When a firm grows, it needs capital, and that capital can come from debt or equity. Debt has two important advantages. First, interest paid on Debt is tax deductible to the corporation. This effectively reduces the debt's effective cost. Second, debt holders get a fixed return so stockholders do not have to share their profits if the business is extremely successful. Debt has disadvantages as well, the higher the debt ratio, the riskier the company, hence higher the cost of debt as well as equity. If the company suffers financial hardships and the operating income is not sufficient to cover interest charges, its stockholders will have to make up for the shortfall and if they cannot, bankruptcy will result. Debt can be an obstacle that blocks a company from seeing better times even if they are a couple of quarters away.
Capital structure policy is a trade-off between risk and return:
· Using debt raises the risk borne by stock holders
· Using more debt generally leads to a higher expected rate on equity.
There are four primary factors influence capital structure decisions:
· Business risk, or the riskiness inherent in the firm's operations, if it uses no debt. The greater the firm's business risk, the lower its optimal debt ratio.
· The firm's tax position. A major reason for using debt is that interest is tax deductible, which lowers the effective cost of debt. However if most of a firm's income is already sheltered from taxes by depreciation tax shields, by interest on currently outstanding debt, or by tax loss carry forwards, its tax rate will already be low, so additional debt will not be as advantageous as it would be to a firm with a higher effective tax rate.
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