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A new ruling by the Securities and Exchange Commission has provided the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) the opportunity to sell put options on its own shares. IBM's assistant treasurer is considering the merits of selling puts in conjunction with the company's ongoing need to repurchase its own shares to satisfy the needs of its Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP). The strategy under review is to use the income from the sale of the puts to offset the price of the shares repurchased each month for the ESPP. The student must assess the probability of the February 1992 puts being in the money and determine whether the risks of writing puts are sufficiently manageable to permit the writing of puts to become a viable, long-term strategy.

The director of equipment finance at Burlington Northern Railroad Company must decide if a leveraged-lease proposal is acceptable. The case emphasizes the importance of the lessee's tax status to the value of the lease and how the perception of residual value affects the valuation for both the lessee and lessor. To value the lease properly, the student must identify the relevant cash flows and the appropriate discount rates for those flows.

A Wall Street Journal article states, "At PepsiCo, Inc., cola was king, but it is quietly being dethroned." PepsiCo is composed of three lines of business: soft drinks, restaurants, and snack foods. Using data from comparable pure-play companies, the student is asked to compute divisional costs of capital and see if they can be reconciled with the company's reported cost of capital, 11%.

This note is an introduction to the concept of cost of capital as an opportunity cost and how to compute weighted-average cost of capital for a corporation.

This note introduces the principal alternative methods for estimating the cost of equity, including the dividend growth model, the earnings capitalization model, and the CAPM.

As the maturity date for General Motors' Class E contingent notes approaches, the GM treasury staff must estimate the potential impact of the liability on corporate cash flows. The student is asked to value the contingent notes and express the value in terms of the cash flows GM might have to pay. The primary objective of the case is for students to draw the parallel between the determinants of value for exchange-traded options and for such nontraded options as the contingent notes. A student worksheet file is available for use with this case.

To assess whether a company should enter the household-products market, Procter and Gamble's weighted-average cost of capital is computed. Clorox's cost of capital is also computed as a check on the P&G estimate. The case emphasizes the conceptual as well as mechanical aspects of computing cost of capital for a company with homogeneous business risk and stable capital structure.