Debt Valuation Flashcards
What is the basic calculation for the value/price of a bond? (1)
- Calculated by comparing the opportunity cost of other investments
What are the benefits of investing in gilts? (2)
- Generating cash flow to fulfil shortfall
- Gilt is backed by the government so there is a guaranteed return - risk-free rate
What is the risk with investing in a corporate bond? (2)
- Issuer may not honour its obligations
- Issuer could default - to cover this risk, investor can demand a higher return than gilts. Risk free rate plus a premium for the risk taken on
What is a credit rating of a bond? (4)
- Different bond issues are associated with differing levels of default risk
- Higher rating = less likely to default
- Investment grade: AAA, Aaa, AA, A, BBB
- Speculative grade: BB, B, CCC, CC, D
What is the assessment process for a credit rating? (6)
- Ratings are forward looking - current and future business
- Management strategy
- Likelihood of default - capacity and willingness to pay - single most important factor to assess credit worthiness
- Payment priority - senior secured debt has the highest priority, followed by senior unsecured debt and last subordinated debt
- Projected recovery - investor would expect to receive if an obligation defaults. Higher the projected recovery rate, better the credit rating
- Financial stability - more stable a company’s finances are, the higher the rating
What to ratings agencies look at when assessing the credit worthiness of a company? (9)
- Financial statements, capital structures, debt and asset protection
- Macroeconomic forecast
- Industry trends
- Regulatory developments
- Management quality
- The bond’s covenant
- Ability to meet payments
- Indebtedness - ‘interest bearing debt/ordinary shareholders funds’
- Profitability - operating income/sales
What is a bond yield? (2)
- Identifies the return achieved from an investment
- Gross Redemption Yield and Flat Yield - bonds
What is flat yield? (3)
- Also known as interest yield
- Measures the return from receiving coupons alone
- Flat yield = gross annual coupon/market price*100
What is gross redemption yield (GRY)? (10)
- Also known as Yield to Maturity - represents the total return achieved from a bond assuming it is held to redemption
- Sum of the flat yield and profit yield gives the GRY
- When the bond is trading below par, the GRY will be more than the flat yield
- When the bond is trading above par, the GRY will be less than the flat yield (capital loss on redemption)
- GRY is a useful indicator to a non taxpayer who intends to hold a gilt to redemption e.g. charities
- Calculation of GRY requires known return and redemption date. Can’t be calculated for stocks or warrants
- GRY increases, price decreases and vice versa. Inverse relationship between bond prices and yields/IRS
Takes into account:
- Coupons received
- Coupons re-invested (assuming no re-investment rate risk)
- Capital gain/loss on redemption
What is net redemption yield (NRY)? (5)
Considers the tax implication of a bond:
- Income tax payable on the coupon
- No tax payable on the gain
- Net coupon = gross coupon x (1-t)
- GRY formula - net coupon instead of gross coupon
- NRY useful for those who are taxpayers - CIS, ITs and insurance companies
What is grossed up net redemption yield? (2)
- Used to compares assets with different tax treatments for gains and income
- Grossed up NRY = NRY / (1-t)
What is decomposing total return on a bond? (2)
- GRY = estimate of the return that an investor will achieve if bought and held to redemption - assumes nothing changes other than time
- Actual returns may differ from GRY
What are the 4 basic components of total return? (4)
- Yield to maturity effect - yield generated if there were no changes in IR or other factors. Often referred to as the income component e.g. predictable income generated through bond
- Interest rate effect - looks at impact of movement on yield curve on bond returns. This may be a shift - increase or decrease in yields. Or a twist - change of the shape of the curve e.g. steepening/flattening
- Sector/quality effect - impact from Chang Erin sector from which issuer comes e.g. economic cycle effecting whole sector - quality effect is the impact on the return of an upgrade or downgrade to the bond’s credit rating. Both impact yield spread between bond and benchmark
- Residual effect - what is left over after other factors have been considered
Summarise the 4 components of total return of a bond? (1)
- YTM effect + interest rate effect + sector/quality effect + residual effect = total return
What are clean prices? (3)
- Quoted bond/gilt prices in the FT
- Clean price does not equal dirty price
- Difference between clean and dirty price is accrued interest
What is accrued interest? (4)
- When investor buys a bond, they not only pay a ‘true’ price but pay interest that has accrued to date
- Total amount paid is the ‘dirty’ price
- Accrued interest on UKG is calculated on the basis of the actual number of calendar days in the year and calendar days in each month of the coupon period ‘actual/actual’
- Exam assumes 182.5 days in a six month period
What are dirty prices? (4)
- During cum coupon period, dirty price keeps increasing as interest accrues on daily basis
- Clean price + pne days accrued interest, clean price + two days accrued interest etc
- Amount actually paid (dirty price) increases over time even though clean price might be constant
- Process continues until ex coupon date - date after which buyer is not entitled to receive next coupon payment - when accrued interest is no longer an issue, and the dirty price falls back down to the clean price
What is the ex coupon date? (6)
- Date on and after a buyer of a bond is not entitled to receive the next coupon payment
- Ex-coupon period for UK gilts is 7 business days
- If an investor buys during the ex coupon period, the directly price (amount paid) will be slightly lower than the clean price
- Purchase of a bond 5 days before coupon is paid - investor would want 5 days worth of interest payments. If this is during the ex coupon period, investor would receive nothing
- To compensate investor for this loss of income, price the purchasers pays will be clean price - 5 days worth of interest. This is why the dirty price is less than the clean price during the ex coupon period
- Dirty price = clean price on coupon payment date itself
Summarise ex coupon date (4)
- During the cum coupon period, the dirty price exceeds the clean price
- On the ex coupon date, the dirty price drops below the clean price
- During the ex coupon period, the dirty price is less than the clean price
- On the coupon payment date, the dirty price and clean price are equal
How do coupons effector bond prices? (4)
- Size of the coupon effects the degree of the price movement
- Smaller the coupon, more the bond’s price will move given interest rate change
- Low coupon bonds are more volatile than high coupon bonds
- A low coupon = most of its return is locked up in the redemption payment that is furthest away in time - more exposed to interest rate changes.
How does time effect bond prices? (1)
- Long dated bonds are more volatile
How does required yield effect bond prices? (2)
- Sensitivity of a bond’s price will change as its yield changes
- The lower the yield of a bond, the more sensitive it is to any changes in that yield
What is Macaulay duration? (4)
- Duration reveals how sensitive a bond is - higher the duration, more sensitive the bond’s price
- Macaulay Duration (economic life of a bond) is the weighted average maturity of a bond where the weights are relative discounted cash flows in each period
- Relative measure - identifies riskiest bond from a list of bonds
- Does not quantify the sensitivity - for this modified duration is required
What is modified duration? (2)
- Estimates how much a bond’s price will change if there is a 1% change in yields
- Modified duration = D/(1+r)