The Incremental Information Value of Credit Ratings on the Cost of Debt －Focused on the Non－listed Firms－
Asian Tax Journal Vol. 12 No. 2 (2011), pp. 523-553
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of credit rating on cost of debt in non-listed firms. A firm’s credit rating reflects a rating agency’s opinion of an entity’s overall creditworthiness and its capacity to satisfy its financial obligations. The principal research issue addressed in this study is the nature of the interrelations between cost of debt, credit ratings, and financial information with particular focus on the role of credit ratings. But the nature of the interrelationships between credit ratings, cost of debt, and financial information has not been fully resolved by previous research. Resolution of these interrelationships is important both as a contribution to the body of accounting research on the properties of accounting numbers and in a practical sense. The importance of credit ratings continues to rise with the globalization of capital markets and the increased use of credit ratings in financial regulation and contracting (Frost 2007). Despite the vital role that credit ratings play in capital markets, relatively little is known about the information used by credit analysts in making rating recommendations. Credit ratings supply a signal about the firms’ default risk. Credit ratings and cost of debt are negatively correlated ; In other words, higher yields are required by debtholders to compensate for the risk of investing in lower-rated (high default-risk). This correlation does not imply causation, however, since credit ratings and cost of debt could be determined by a third factor: concurrent publicly available information. Recent research discussed indicates that both credit ratings and financial information may have independent effects on cost of debt. The research design used in this study provides evidence on the issue of whether credit ratings directly determine the cost of debt, whether financial information directly determines the cost of debt, and whether financial information affects the cost of debt indirectly through determining credit ratings. To do this, this paper use credit ratings from KIS-Value Ⅲ. Initially, 1 point represents firms with the best credit rank and 10 point represents firms with the worst credit rank. However, for the purpose of interpretation, remark credit rank oppositely. That is, 1 point represents firms with the worst credit rank and 10 point represents firms with the best credit rank. For a dependent variable, cost of debt are borrowing’s interests rates and borrowing’s yield spread. The borrowing yield spread is calculated as deducting a 3-year treasury bond from loan interest rate. Observations of this paper are 46,616 firm-year in non-listed companies which are not listed in Korea security market from 2004 to 2009. Findings of this paper are following, firms received a good credit rating after controlling for other financial variables and firms characteristics that affect negatively the cost of debt (borrowing’s interests rates and borrowing’s yield spread). These results are still hold even after appling a fractional ranks variable rather than a continuous variable as a dependent variable. And also t-statistics from Newey and West (1987) are significant, suggesting that this results are robust. This study primary analysis documents that firms’ credit ratings affects the cost of debt. Therefore, these findings of this study are very useful and provide a lot of important implications to regulators, investors and creditors that are interested in cost of debt. Academics can also apply the discussion in this paper for related researches.
Keywords
- Cost of debt
- Borrowing's interests rates
- Borrowing's yield spread
- Financial information
- Firm characteristics
- Credit ratings
- Market's perception
- Non－listed firms
Related Articles
The Effects of Discretionary Accruals by Non－listed Firms on the Association between Earnings and Cost of Debt
12(3) 429-458
The Effects of Audit Quality on the Association between Operating Performance and Cost of Debt, and the Persistence of Earnings and Cash Flows from Operations －Focused on Non－listed Firms－
15(3) 9-45
The Effect of the Debt Dependance on the Association between Earnings and Cost of Debt in Private Firms
14(2) 47-80
Earnings Downside Risk and Cost of Debt Capital
26(5) 63-87
The Effect of Company ESG Performance on Credit Rating
23(3) 41-67