Johnson & Johnson has issued notes onto the market that mature in 2017, comprising the bulk of the long-term debt.
The calculate the market value capital structure of JNJ, we need to find estimates of the market value for their long-term liabilities and their equity. For short-term liabilities, we will assume that because the maturity is under one year, the market value and the book value will be sufficiently similar to one another.
As of market close on Friday August 1, 2008, Johnson & Johnson had 2818.19 million shares outstanding. The price of their stock was $68.61. This gives them a market capitalization for their equity of $191,918.91 million.
The market value of their long-term liabilities can be estimated based on the market value of their outstanding long-term debt, the 2017 note. This bond has a coupon of 5.55 and a maturity of 15-Aug-2017. This bond is currently priced at 105.61 on the open market. This price represents the net present value of those cash flows, both the interest and the principle.
JNJ also has another long-term bond on the market. This bond has a maturity of 15-Aug-2037. The coupon on this bond is 5.95%, and the price is 108.90. For the majority of JNJ's long-term debt, the "other long-term liabilities," we do not know the structure or nature. Therefore, we shall have to extrapolate the information from the marketed securities and apply it to the other long-term liabilities in order to achieve an estimate of the market value.
To do this, we will average the price of the two bonds on the market, to get an average price of 107.255. The securities would have been issued at par value, which is reflected in the book value. So the average price of the debt currently on the market represents the appreciation over the book value. This gives us a market value for the long-term debt of 107.255 * 18,299 = 19,626.59.
Therefore, the market value capital structure of Johnson & Johnson is as follows:
Equity
Short-Term Liabilities
Long-Term Liabilities
So we can see that the capital structure based on book value is much more heavily weighted towards equity. This reflects a couple of factors. One is that JNJ is not highly leveraged. They have only a couple of major public debt issues, which means that the majority of their liabilities both short-term and long-term flow from operations.
Another factor at play is the disparity between the balance sheet and the stock market valuation. The balance sheet stock issue is low, with the majority of the equity being retained earnings. The stock market, however, is basing its valuation based on expectations of future performance. Retained earnings only reflects past performance, since the profit needs to be earned before it can be translated to the balance sheet.
Weighted Average Cost of Capital
There are several components to the WACC of Johnson & Johnson. We will first compute the before-tax cost of debt, both short-term and long-term. For the short-term debt, we will use an estimate based on the 3-month non-financial CD rate. This is 2.21%.
We shall base the long-term cost of capital on the average yield to maturity of JNJ's two long-term debt issues. The 2017 issue has a YTM of 4.831%, and the 2037 issue has a YTM of 5.09%. The average of yield to maturity of these two issues is 5.09%.
Next, we shall determine the tax rate so that we may calculate the after-tax cost of short-term and long-term debt. This is an important consideration because interest expense comes off of the income statement before taxes are applied. Therefore, one must compare after-tax cost of debt vs. The cost of equity, which is not subject to tax deduction.
Corporate tax rates fluctuate each year for a variety of reasons. In the case of Johnson & Johnson, their income tax provision for 2007 was significantly lower than it was in the preceding five years, at 20.3%. This is compared with the provisions from the previous four years ranging from 23.2% to 33.6%. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the tax rate for JNJ is typically going to higher than the 2007 number. Since the numbers of 2003 and 2004 are far above what they have paid in the past three years, we will estimate their tax rate based on the past three years only. The average tax rate for the past three years has been 22.5%.
The after tax cost of debt is calculated as After-tax dost of debt = (before tax cost of debt) * (1 - tax rate)
When applied to the before-tax short-term cost of debt, the after-tax cost of short-term debt is 1.7127%. When applied to the before-tax cost of long-term debt, the after-tax cost of long-term debt is 3.944%.
To estimate the cost of equity, we can use several different models. The first we shall use is CAPM. The CAPM formula is as follows:
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