A first year business school student has obtained a summer job as an analyst at a top investment bank in Los Angeles, California. His first assignment was the pricing of MicroComp's junk-bonds in the market place. Looking at the market value balance sheets, it was very clear that MicroComp was in financial distress. MicroComp's dept totaled $150 million, while the market value of its assets were $80 million. If MicroComp was required to repay its debt immediately, it would be forced into bankruptcy. Clearly, MicroComp was in effective default, why did its market capitalization remain at $5 million? Why had it not fallen to zero? Students will use option theory to answer these questions.
The manager of a billion dollar hedge fund had just been approached by a syndicate of funds to gauge her interest in a bid to purchase RamSync Incorporated, a Silicon-Valley manufacturer of memory chips. Using a traditional discounted cash flow analysis (the APV method), the manager quickly determines that at a purchase price of $900 million, RamSync has a negative NPV of $33 million. However, purchasing RamSync, which currently produces SDRAM, would allow the owner to enter the much-anticipated MRAM market at a future period in time. The manager is now forced to reconsider how to value RamSync considering the hidden call option it has on the MRAM market.