THE TRADE-OFF THEORY OF FINANCIAL LEVERAGE
The trade-off theory of financial leverage shows the impact of increases in financial
leverage on the company’s weighted average cost of capital (WACC). Increases in debt in
the company’s capital structure increase the tax benefit since the interest payments on the
debt is a tax deductible expense. At the same time, the company’s cost of equity increases
because the additional debt in the company’s capital structure increases the riskiness of the
equity. WACC will decline as long as the positive impact of the tax shelter is greater than the
negative effect of the increase in the cost of equity resulting from the added risk. Eventually,
the tax shelter benefit will be less that the additional cost of equity. At this point, investors
will required a higher cost of debt and an even higher cost of equity because investors believe
that the risk level of the company’s risk from the financial leverage has increased beyond the
optimal point for the company. A company’s market capitalization is maximized when the
WACC is minimized because the trade-off theory assumes that the company incurs additional
bankruptcy risk and bankruptcy cost resulting from the additional financial leverage. The
company’s WACC starts to rise beyond the optimal level of financial leverage. The
minimum WACC, is the point at which the market value of the company is maximized
because this is the total debt level at which the of capital structure is optimized.
In this study, the trade-off theory of capital structure is applied to Coca-Cola and
Pepsico. To apply the trade-off theory requires calculating the weighted average cost of
capital (WACC) under different total debt ratio levels using actual market values for the cost
of debt and the cost of equity using actual financial data for Coke and Pepsi and simulated
data for alternative levels of debt.