Question

Saffron Industries most recent balance sheet reports total assets of $42,000,000, total liabilities of $16,000,000 and stockholders' equity of $26,000,000. Management is considering using $3,000,000 of excess cash to prepay $3,000,000 of outstanding bonds. What effect, if any, would prepaying the bonds have on the company's debt-to-equity ratio

Answer 1

Answer:

A) Prepaying the debt would cause the firm's debt-to-equity ratio to improve from .62 to .50.

Explanation:

The computation of the impact is as follows:

The Debt equity ratio is

= Total liabilities ÷ total equity

Now

Debt equity prior to payment is

= $16,000,000 ÷ $26,000,000

= 0.62

And,

Debt equity after payment is

= $13,000,000 ÷ $26,000,000

= 0.50

So here as we can see that the debt equity would be improved from 0.62 to 0.50

Therefore the correct option is a.