Continental Carriers, Inc. :: Finance Advanced Financial Management

Continental Carriers, Inc. (This is not an essay. This paper responds to each of the comments raised by the five members of the board.) Continental Carriers, Inc. (CCI) should take on the long-term debt to finance the acquisition of Midland Freight, Inc. for a few reasons. The company is heavy on assets, the debt ratio will only grow to 0.40 with the added $50M in debt. Also, the firm will benefit from an added $2M in a tax shield and be able to return $12.7M a year to its stockholders and investors, instead of $8.9M if equity is raised to finance the acquisition. Lastly, the stock price and earnings per share will increase to $3.87 in comparison to an equity-financed acquisition of $2.72 per share. CCI would be taking a somewhat high risk by issuing additional stock due to the uncertainty about the offering price. Having a low P/E ratio with respect to the rest of the market, and the replacement cost of the firm being greater than its book value (argument 3), there is a good chance that the current stock price and the proposed offering prices are too low. Although long-term debt is a better financing choice a few of the drawbacks are pointed out. Debt holders claim profit before equity holders, so the chance that profits may be lower than expected, increases risk to equity may reduce or impede stock value. However, in extreme financial situations such as a recession period, CCI would still be able to increase its cash during a recession period with all debt capital structure. Also, there is a remaining 12.5 million that would have to be paid at the expiration of the bonds, but that could be paid off by issuing new bonds or additional equity at that time. Five members of the board raised comments that have been addressed as follows: 1. The argument of the debt financing being a risky venture since the proposition was to pay out to a sinking fund does not make sense. Over the course of the next seven years, CCI had a historical growth in revenue of 9%. This growth along with the $2M tax shelter would easily pay for the sinking fund. In addition, by buying back bonds annually, the interest expense is further decreased, thus creating less of a burden on the cash flow. In contrast, an equity-financed acquisition would spread the net income out over 3 million more shares, thereby reducing the dividend pay-out to shareholders. 2. Another director argued that with equity financing, the shareholders will yield a 10% EBIT of $5M. Furthermore, this director posited that 3 million shares at $1.