Valuation with mixed financing strategies

Abstract

In corporate valuation, it is common to assume either passive or active debt management. However, it is questionable whether these pure financing policies reflect the real financing policies of firms with a sufficient degree of accuracy. This shortcoming has led to the development of mixed financing strategies as combinations of pure financing strategies. Whereas hybrid financing is directly linked to the two-phase model, it is unclear how to apply discontinuous financing in such a setting. In this study, according to the two versions of hybrid financing, we analyze the implementation of discontinuous financing in a two-phase model. Thereby, we present a simpler and more intuitive derivation of the valuation equation for discontinuous financing to increase its acceptance and its use for corporate valuation practice. Moreover, we compare the different mixed financing strategies with each other theoretically, and we conduct simulations to elucidate the impact on market values and the sensitivities of input parameters. The study concludes that the presented mixed financing strategies can help in the attempt to reflect the real financing behavior of firms more accurately and, therefore, constitute a valuable alternative to pure financing strategies for valuation.