The impact of meeting or beating analysts' operating cash flow forecasts on a firm's cost of debt

Extant literature provides conflicting results with respect to the usefulness and accuracy of analysts' operating cash flow forecasts. Our study empirically examines the importance and influence of meeting or beating analysts' operating cash flow forecasts on a firm's cost of debt. Results indicate that firms meeting/beating analysts' cash flow forecasts have higher initial bond ratings as well as lower initial bond yields. Additionally, based upon an analysis of rating changes, firms meeting or beating cash flow forecasts have a higher probability of receiving a debt rating upgrade and a lower probability of a ratings downgrade compared to firms missing cash flow forecasts. A direct comparison of the importance of meeting/beating cash flow versus earnings benchmarks indicates that debt market participants appear to incrementally value both types of forecasts, and contrary to selected equity market findings, neither forecast subsumes the other for debt market participants.     

A theory of operational cash holding,endogenous financial constraints,and credit rationing

This paper develops a theory of operational cash holding. Liquidity shocks due to delayed payments must be financed using cash or short-term debt. Debt holders provide an irrevocable credit line given a firm's expected insolvency risk, and equity holders select optimum cash holding. The model demonstrates the trade-off between cash holding and investing in fixed assets. Introducing uncertain cash flows leads to precautionary cash holding if debt holders impose financial constraints. Precautionary cash holding, in turn, reduces insolvency risk enhancing access to short-term finance. The theory shows that credit rationing can occur in the absence of market frictions. Using U.S. data from 1998 to 2012, empirical findings suggest that the decline in credit lines has contributed to the increase in cash holding in line with theoretical predictions.     

Is the relationship between investment and conditional cash flow volatility ambiguous,asymmetric or both?

We investigate the effect of cash flow volatility on investment. Our evidence suggests that financially constrained firms decrease investment (i) when experiencing persistently high volatility; (ii) when experiencing both high volatility and negative cash flow growth realisations; and (iii) when holding low cash levels and experiencing both high volatility and a negative cash flow growth realisations. In financially unconstrained firms, the above effects are either not found or are of relatively low economic importance. Overall, our findings lend support to the financial flexibility literature and tend to contradict predictions of the real options literature.     

CEO inside debt and investment‐cash flow sensitivity

This paper provides a new explanation for investment‐cash flow sensitivity from the perspective of CEO inside debt holdings. We examine the effect of CEO pensions and deferred compensation (inside debt) on investment‐cash flow sensitivity for a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms from 2006 to 2012. We find that the firms with higher relative CEO leverage ratios (CEO's debt/equity ratio scaled by the firm's debt/equity ratio) generate higher investment‐cash flow sensitivity. Moreover, one standard deviation increase in the logarithm of the relative CEO leverage ratio enlarges investment‐cash flow sensitivity by 50 per cent. This positive relationship still holds even after we take account of endogeneity and financial constraints.     

Corporate precautionary cash holdings

This paper models the precautionary motive for a firm's cash holdings. A two-period investment model shows that the cash holdings of financially constrained firms are sensitive to cash flow volatility because financial constraints create an intertemporal trade-off between current and future investments. When future cash flow risk cannot be fully diversifiable, this intertemporal trade-off gives constrained firms the incentives of precautionary savings: they increase their cash holdings in response to increases in cash flow volatility. However, there is no systematic relationship between cash holdings and cash flow volatility for unconstrained firms. We test the empirical implications of our theory using quarterly information from a sample of U.S. publicly traded companies from 1997 to 2002, and find that the empirical evidence supports our theory.     

Consolidating Corporate Control: Divisional Versus Whole-Company Leveraged Buyouts

We examine the empirical relation between firm characteristics and the likelihood of choosing a restructuring choice between two types of leveraged buyouts: a whole‐company leveraged buyout (WLBO) and a divisional leveraged buyout (DLBO). Our findings suggest that firm characteristics such as volatility of cash flow and growth potential play an important role in determining a firm's restructuring choice between a WLBO and a DLBO. In particular, firms with greater volatility of cash flow and/or greater future growth potential are more likely to adopt a DLBO than a WLBO as their restructuring choice. These results are consistent with the notion that although low‐growth, high‐cash‐flow firms would create the most value for stockholders by paying out cash and tying future cash flows to the firm's debt service through a WLBO, high‐growth, low‐cash‐flow firms would be better off by selling assets if those assets would be better managed under a DLBO.     

Financial constraints on credit ratings and cash-flow sensitivity

This study investigates whether financial constraints, as measured by the level of credit ratings and their migrations would affect the firm's cash flow allocation policies and reflect the main financial constraints on a firm's cash flow sensitivity of cash. For a given credit quality shock, control for firm-level characteristics and endogeneity of cash flow allocation, our results suggest that firms with higher credit financial constraints have significantly higher cash flow sensitivities on cash holding, investment, and debt financing activities. Our results provide evidence that credit rating risk has a larger impact on cash flow allocation and drives the financial constraints on cash flow sensitivity for various reasons, including precautionary motivation and restricted access to external financing.     

The Determinants of Implied Volatility: A Test Using LIFFE Option Prices

This paper presents and tests a model of the volatility of individual companies' stocks, using implied volatilities derived from option prices. The data comes from traded options quoted on the London International Financial Futures Exchange. The model relates equity volatilities to corporate earnings announcements, interest-rate volatility and to four determining variables representing leverage, the degree of fixed-rate debt, asset duration and cash flow inflation indexation. The model predicts that equity volatility is positively related to duration and leverage and negatively related to the degree of inflation indexation and the proportion of fixed-rate debt in the capital structure. Empirical results suggest that duration, the proportion of fixed-rate debt, and leverage are significantly related to implied volatility. Regressions using all four determining variables explain approximately 30% of the cross-sectional variation in volatility. Time series tests confirm an expected drop in volatility shortly after the earnings announcement and in most cases a positive relationship between the volatility of the stock and the volatility of interest rates.     

Vertical integration as an input price hedge: The case of Delta Air Lines and trainer refinery

In April 2012, Delta Air Lines (Delta) purchased a mothballed oil refinery. We use this case to illustrate when, how, and why vertical integration (VI) can hedge input price risk. First, we show that stockholders and creditors expected the move to create wealth. Consistent with their predictions, Delta's exposure to refining margins, cash flow volatility, cost of debt, and default probability all decreased, relative to peers, postacquisition. Our evidence is consistent with the refinery influencing Delta's operating strategies, especially in its most affected markets. The case demonstrates how asset specificity and financial hedging frictions can justify VI.     

Marketable Incentive Contracts and Capital Structure Relevance

This article investigates the claim that debt finance can increase firm value by curtailing managers' access to “free cash flow.” We first show that incentive contracts that tie the managers' pay to stockholder wealth are often a superior solution to the free cash flow problem. We then consider the possibility that the manager can trade on secondary capital markets. Liquid secondary markets are shown to undermine management incentive schemes and, in many cases, to restore the value of debt finance in controlling the free cash flow problem.     

Financing decisions when managers are risk averse

Leverage raises stock volatility, driving a wedge between the cost of debt to shareholders and the cost to undiversified, risk-averse managers. I quantify these “volatility costs” of debt and examine their impact on financing decisions. I find that: (1) the volatility costs of debt can be large for executives exposed to firm-specific risk; (2) for a range of empirically relevant parameters, higher option ownership tends to increase, not decrease, the volatility costs of debt; and (3) for managers with stock options, a stock price increase typically raises volatility costs. For a large sample of US firms, I find evidence that volatility costs affect both the level of and short-term changes in debt, and that volatility costs help explain a firm's choice between debt and equity.     

Determinants of Managerial Stock Ownership: The Case of CEOs

Research on the determinants of managerial equity ownership in firms is scant. To a limited extent, prior researchers have examined the variations in insider ownership proportions by combining the officers and directors into one group. This paper differs from earlier studies by focusing on the CEO. The evidence suggests that agency costs, free cash flow, and potential non-diversification losses and CEO attributes are important in explaining variations in CEOs' equity proportions in firms. Specifically, the paper finds that the proportion of CEO's ownership is related positively to the firm's debt level, diversification potential of the firm's common stock, free cash flows, and earnings volatility, and related negatively to the firm size.     

Customers and cash: How relationships affect suppliers' cash holdings

If one customer accounts for a large portion of a supplier's sales, then the loss of that one customer can cripple the supplier's financial health. As a precaution against the additional operating risk induced by being in an important relationship with a customer, I find that suppliers in such relationships hold more cash on average than suppliers that are not in important relationships. Additionally, supplier's cash holdings increase proportionately with the importance of their customer relationships. Being in an important relationship affects cash holdings and leverage differently, indicating that firms manage cash and debt for different purposes. I find that suppliers in relationships primarily accrue cash through issuance of stock as opposed to debt or retained earnings. The results highlight the importance of understanding buyer–supplier relationships when evaluating a firm's financing policy.     

Cash holding,trade credit and access to short-term bank finance

Since 1988, cash holding of the UK companies has increased from 10.6% to 16.4% of total assets. To explain this increase, we develop a panel vector autoregression and analyse the dynamics between cash holding and its closest substitutes, trade credit and short-term bank finance. Impulse response functions confirm the signalling theory, as trade credit facilitates access to bank finance. Firms experiencing liquidity shocks resort to cash or trade credit but not to bank finance. Cash holding improves access to trade credit. Additional cash and trade credit trigger a slowdown of the cash conversion cycle explained by agency theory. Cash-rich firms have accumulated more cash than predicted because of an unexpected decline in short-term debt, stressing the role of banks in explaining the increase in cash holding.     

Optimal Security Design and Dynamic Capital Structure in a Continuous-Time Agency Model

We derive the optimal dynamic contract in a continuous‐time principal‐agent setting, and implement it with a capital structure (credit line, long‐term debt, and equity) over which the agent controls the payout policy. While the project's volatility and liquidation cost have little impact on the firm's total debt capacity, they increase the use of credit versus debt. Leverage is nonstationary, and declines with past profitability. The firm may hold a compensating cash balance while borrowing (at a higher rate) through the credit line. Surprisingly, the usual conflicts between debt and equity (asset substitution, strategic default) need not arise.     

A Dynamic Model of Optimal Creditor Dispersion

Borrowing from multiple creditors exposes firms to rollover risk due to coordination problems among creditors, but it also improves firms' repayment incentives, thereby increasing pledgeability. Based on this trade‐off, I develop a dynamic debt rollover model to analyze the evolution of creditor dispersion. Consistent with empirical evidence, I find that firms optimally increase creditor dispersion after poor performance. In contrast, cross‐sectionally higher‐growth firms can support more dispersed creditors. Frequent debt renegotiation limits firms' ability to increase pledgeability by having more creditors. Finally, holding a cash balance while borrowing from multiple creditors improves firms' repayment incentives uniformly across all future states.     

Brand perception,cash flow stability,and financial policy

This paper demonstrates that intangible assets play an important role in financial policy. Using a proprietary database of consumer brand evaluation, I show that positive consumer attitude toward a firm's products alleviates financial frictions and provides additional net debt capacity, as measured by higher leverage and lower cash holdings. Brand perception affects financial policy through reducing overall firm riskiness, as strong consumer evaluations translate into lower future cash flow volatility as well as higher credit ratings for potentially volatile firms. The impact of brand is stronger among small firms, contradicting a number of reverse causality and omitted variables explanations.     

U.S., Anglo-Saxon European,and non-Anglo-Saxon European cash holdings around the financial crisis

For the period 2003–2018, we show that U.S. firms have a higher cash-to-assets ratio than European firms have—in particular, among firms with high R&D expenditures and those in industries with high cash flow volatility, indicating the potential roles of precaution and uncertainty respectively in cash holding. We find evidence that industry cash flow volatility is relevant throughout the period, while R&D seems to matter only during the crisis years of 2008–2009. With respect to European cash holdings, there are slight differences between Anglo-Saxon European and non-Anglo-Saxon European firms.     

The relationship between a firm’s information environment and its cash holding decision

This study directly investigates the relationship between the firm’s information environment and its cash holding decision using two separate country-level events as proxies for a general improvement of the information environment: the initial enforcement of new insider trading laws and the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards. Analysing a large international sample, we find that firms reduce their cash holdings after both exogenous information shocks. We also find that the reductions are greater for firms facing greater financing constraints and agency issues, and for those for which the informational shocks are stronger. Further analyses reveal a reduction in firms’ average cash savings rate, an increase in performance, an increase in the use of external debt, a decrease in abnormal investment, and an increase in the value of cash holdings. Taken together, our results suggest that an improvement in the information environment mitigates both the adverse selection and moral hazard problems thereby, leading to a reduction in cash reserves held for transaction and precautionary motives, and the likelihood of entrenched managers building large cash balances for private benefit.     

The joint determinants of cash holdings and debt maturity: the case for financial constraints

We examine the joint choices of cash holdings and debt maturity for a large sample of firms for the 1985–2013 period. We find that there is a positive relation between debt maturity and cash holdings. Our results hold after taking into account endogeneity among leverage, debt maturity, and cash holding. We posit that this positive relationship will be found among firms facing financial constraints and we find support for this hypothesis. Our results are robust after we control for agency problems, international taxation, bank loan liquidity covenants and default risk.