Question 7.6: Titan Industries has 217 million shares outstanding and expe...
Titan Industries has 217 million shares outstanding and expects earnings at the end of this year of $860 million. Titan plans to pay out 50% of its earnings in total, paying 30% as a dividend and using 20% to repurchase shares. If Titan’s earnings are expected to grow by 7.5% per year and these payout rates remain constant, determine Titan’s share price assuming an equity cost of capital of 10%.
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Plan
Based on the equity cost of capital of 10% and an expected earnings growth rate of 7.5%, we can compute the present value of Titan’s future payouts as a constant growth perpetuity. The only input missing here is Titan’s total payouts this year, which we can calculate as 50% of its earnings. The present value of all of Titan’s future payouts is the value of its total equity. To obtain the price of a share, we divide the total value by the number of shares outstanding (217 million).
Execute
Titan will have total payouts this year of 50% × $860 million = $430 million. Using the constant growth perpetuity formula, we have
PV ( Future Total Dividends and Repurchases ) =\frac{\$430 million}{0.10-0.075} =\$17.2 billion
This present value represents the total value of Titan’s equity (i.e., its market capitalization). To compute the share price, we divide by the current number of shares outstanding:
P_{0}=\frac{\$17.2 billion}{217 million shares} =\$79.26 per shareEvaluate
Using the total payout method, we did not need to know the firm’s split between dividends and share repurchases. To compare this method with the dividend- discount model, note that Titan will pay a dividend of 30% × ( $860 million/217 million shares) = $1.19 per share, for a dividend yield of 1.19/79.26 = 1.50%.
From Eq. 7.7, we can solve for Titan’s expected growth rates of EPS, dividend, and share price:
r_{E}=\frac{Div_{1} }{P_{0} } +g (7.7)
g=r_{E}-\frac{Div_{1} }{P_{0} } =.10-\frac{1.19}{79.26} =0.085=8.5\%This growth rate exceeds the 7.50% growth rate of earnings because Titan’s share count will decline over time owing to its share repurchases.^{8}