FROM COST OF EQUITY TO COST OF CAPITAL

Although equity is undoubtedly an important and indispensable ingredient of the financing mix for every business, it is but one ingredient. Most businesses finance some or much of their operations using debt or some security that is a combination of equity and debt. The costs of these sources of financing are generally very different from the cost of equity, and the cost of financing for a firm should reflect their costs as well, in proportion to their use in the financing mix. Intuitively, the cost of capital is the weighted average of the costs of the different components of financing—including debt, equity, and hybrid securities—used by a firm to fund its financial requirements. This section examines the process of estimating the cost of financing other than equity, and the weights for computing the cost of capital.