Bibliographic record
Abstract
Academics and professionals frequently use the yield to maturity (YTM) as a proxy for the cost of debt when valuing firms using discounted cash flow (DCF). This paper demonstrates that this practice is incorrect because YTM is calculated based on promised cash flows, whereas the traditional DCF valuation of firms is based on expected cash flows. The correct cost of debt in DCF valuations of firms is the expected return on debt. Valuations of firms that use the YTM as the cost of debt underestimate the correct value. This distortion is particularly large for highly levered firms where the difference between YTM and expected return on debt is sizable. These results are demonstrated using the recent highly publicized leveraged buyout of Clear Channel Communications Inc. We show that if YTM rather than expected return on debt were used in the valuation process, the price offered for the shares would have significantly underestimated their fair value.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.109 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".