Estimating beta and Cost of Equity Capital for Non-traded Transportation Companies

Diploma Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 1,3, University of Hamburg (Institut für Finanzierung - Lehrstuhl für Unternehmens- und Schiffsfinanzierung), language: English, abstract: This thesis examines the relationship between systematic risk and accounting variables for non-traded transportation companies and provides an applicable CAPM framework for estimating the cost of equity capital. I extend previous research by assessing the risk relevance of accounting measures in an international multi-beta asset pricing model. The findings indicate that accounting variables can significantly explain systematic risk in this context. However, the non-significance and the signs of certain variables are contradictory to either theoretical assumptions or previous results. Firm size appears to be a key variable in explaining market betas, though positively correlated to systematic risk. A CAPM-linked framework is used to estimate the cost of equity capital which on average range between 5.5% and 8.7% per annum. It can be shown that they substantially vary across divisions and subsidiaries when broken down to single groups of companies.