Should One Assume the Discount Rate to Be One of the Risk Factors?

Abstract

The Monte Carlo simulation is the ultimate solution for considering nearly all possible scenarios in presumably any discounted cash flow valuation. This paper argues that a discount rate expresses an investor’s current requirement and should be respectively perceived as a parameter only. The consequences of qualifying a required rate of return (a discount rate) as a risk factor in a discounted cash flow valuation are described in the paper using a free cash flow financial model of an asset being a hypothetical publicly traded enterprise. The case study is a discounted cash flow valuation using the Monte Carlo simulation for risk analysis. The various sets of assumptions are considered to explain the consequences of qualifying a required rate of return in a discounted cash flow model as a risk factor. As indicated in the paper, the discount rate as an additional risk factor with an attributed probability distribution increases the volatility of a risk variable, then the distribution of a risk variable becomes more flattened. In previous studies, some authors indicated that a discount rate could be considered a risk factor in the Monte Carlo simulation (Krysiak 2000; Damodaran 2018).