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Case Study Of WACC Of The Coca-Cola Company

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Weighted average cost of capital (WACC) is a calculation of a firm’s cost of capital which each type of capital is proportionately weighted. WACC is used as a discount rate for investment appraisal. Hence, calculating WACC of a firm is important.
The Coca-Cola Company is a beverage company which owns more than 500 nonalcoholic brands. Its product is known by customers all over the world. The company has market capitalization of $185.88 billion (Google finance, Oct 2015). In addition to equity capital, the company also issues corporate bonds to finance its operation. Both stocks and bonds of the company is traded in The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). To calculate WACC of The Coca-Cola Company, we need to obtain some information about its debt …show more content…

Using the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), the cost of equity is calculated as:
Cost of Equity = Risk Free Rate + Beta Equity*(Average Market Return – Risk Free Rate)
As interest rate on a three-month US Treasury bill is used as the risk free rate, this rate is obtained from Bloomberg is 0.05% (Bloomberg, Oct 2015).
The beta equity of Coca-Cola is 0.48 (Google finance, Oct 2015).
The average market return is 7% (Trent Hamm, Dec 2014).
The cost of equity is:
Cost of Equity = Risk Free Rate + Beta Equity*(Average Market Return – Risk Free Rate) = 0.05% +0.48*(7%-0.05%) = 3.39%
Currently, The Coca-Cola Company has cost of equity of 3.39% meaning investors require return of 3.39% for their investments in Coca-Cola.

Using Gordon model, cost of equity is calculated as below:
Cost of equity = (Next year’s annual dividend/Current stock price) + dividend growth rate.
Due to latest quarterly report of Coca-Cola, the Board of Directors approved the Company's regular quarterly dividend of $0.33 per share at its October 2015 meeting. Hence, the next year’s annual dividend is $1.32 per …show more content…

Value of debt

Because The Coca-Cola Company uses corporate bond as the mainly source of debt financing so the amount of debt bearing interest is almost bond. Obtaining the information of outstanding bonds in Morningstar website, we have the list of Coca-Cola bonds as follows:
Name Maturity date Amount ($ mil)
Coca Cola
09/09/2019 2,234.70
Coca Cola
03/09/2017 2,234.70
Coca Cola 2.875%
10/27/2025 1,750.00
Coca Cola 0.75%
03/09/2023 1,676.00
Coca Cola 1.125%
03/09/2027 1,676.00
Coca Cola 1.625%
03/09/2035 1,676.00
Coca Cola 1.8%
09/01/2016 1,646.00
Coca Cola 3.2%
11/01/2023 1,500.00
Coca Cola

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