Sudden upswings and downswings produce opportunities for your competitors to steal customers by undercutting price, delivering products faster, or designing better products. explain what caterpillar and its dealers can do to decrease customer losses and defections.

Afirm's before-tax cost of debt, rd, is the interest rate that the firm must pay on debt. because interest is tax deductible, the relevant cost of debt used to calculate a firm's wacc is the cost of debt, rd (1 – t). the cost of debt is used in calculating the wacc because we are interested in maximizing the value of the firm's stock, and the stock price depends on cash flows. it is important to emphasize that the cost of debt is the interest rate on debt, not debt because our primary concern with the cost of capital is its use in capital budgeting decisions. the rate at which the firm has borrowed in the past is because we need to know the cost of capital. for these reasons, the on outstanding debt (which reflects current market conditions) is a better measure of the cost of debt than the . the on the company's -term debt is generally used to calculate the cost of debt because more often than not, the capital is being raised to fund -term projects. quantitative problem: 5 years ago, barton industries issued 25-year noncallable, semiannual bonds with a $1,600 face value and a 8% coupon, semiannual payment ($64 payment every 6 months). the bonds currently sell for $845.87. if the firm's marginal tax rate is 40%, what is the firm's after-tax cost of debt? round your answer to 2 decimal places. do not round intermediate calcu

The uptowner just paid an annual dividend of $4.12. the company has a policy of increasing the dividend by 2.5 percent annually. you would like to purchase shares of stock in this firm but realize that you will not have the funds to do so for another four years. if you require a rate of return of 16.7 percent, how much will you be willing to pay per share when you can afford to make this investment?

Gary lives in an area that receives high rainfall and thunderstorms throughout the year. which device would be useful to him to maintain his computer?