Debt and Duration: Why You Should Rethink Your Mix of Short-term Debt

Abstract

Financing of a business involves several choices and tradeoffs: a key choice that CFOs often make is: “How much debt should we take on to finance our business?” A related question, often neglected is: “What kind of debt?” All forms of lending are not the same and one key dimension of debt is its maturity period. Short-term debt and long-term debt have different impacts on the profitability and valuation of a firm. Do investors demand higher returns on equity if the composition of debt includes more of certain kind of debt? The question has long bothered corporate finance as well as scholars. Recent research by Friewald, Nagler, & Wagner has uncovered an insight that should help CFOs, as it found a clear link between the level of debt, the maturity (ranging from short to long term) of debt and equity returns.1 The essence of their finding is: “… Equity returns increase in short-term leverage but not in long-term leverage”. Meaning that your equity investors expect higher returns on capital, the more your mix of short-term debt increases. In this essay, we explain why this happens, and we outline takeaways for managers of corporate finance. We illustrate how the nature of the industry in which your business operates, impacts your debt financing – both the level, as well as the mix of short- and long-term debt