Continental Carriers, Inc.
June 16, 2005
Continental Carriers, Inc.
Advanced Financial Management
Professor Clayton
June 16, 2005
Tim Boyd
Dave Chen
Ian Hoffman
Chirayu Patel
Continental Carriers, Inc. (CCI) should take on the long-term debt to finance the acquisition of Midland Freight, Inc. for a few reasons. The company is heavy on assets, the debt ratio will only grow to 0.40 with the added $50M in debt. Also, the firm will benefit from an added $2M in a tax shield and be able to return $12.7M a year to its stockholders and investors, instead of $8.9M if equity is raised to finance the acquisition. Lastly, the stock price and earnings per share will increase to $3.87 in comparison to an equity-financed acquisition of $2.72 per share. CCI would be taking a somewhat high risk by issuing additional stock due to the uncertainty about the offering price. Having a low P/E ratio with respect to the rest of the market, and the replacement cost of the firm being greater than its book value (argument 3), there is a good chance that the current stock price and the proposed offering prices are too low.