Multicriteria Estimated Cost of Equity Capital

Abstract

The estimation of the cost of equity capital is a key input to the capital budgeting  process when the firm uses internal financing. Financial analyst and managers usually utilize the CAPM to estimate the cost of equity which requires both measurement of  the market risk premium and estimation of beta. For publicly traded firms, calculating the cost of equity is entirely based on information from the financial markets. Non traded firms and small businesses do not have sufficient market based information. This article proposes a multicriteria model to determine the cost of equity for non traded firms. The Analytic Hierarchy Process developed by Thomas Saaty is the proposed methodology for deriving relative priorities of tangible and intangible corporate risk factors. The model requires business managers to identify the relevant information sources for the required input data. The inconsistencies checking mechanism within the AHP model allows management to identify inconsistencies, to revise prior judgments and to synthesize coherently.