Inflation will cause earnings to increase, even if there is no increase in sales volume. Yet, the book value of the assets that produced the sales and the annual depreciation expense remain at historic values and do not reflect the actual cost of replacing those assets. Thus, ratios that compare current flows with historic values become distorted over time.

Torino company has 1,300 shares of $50 par value, 6.0% cumulative and nonparticipating preferred stock and 13,000 shares of $10 par value common stock outstanding. the company paid total cash dividends of $3,500 in its first year of operation. the cash dividend that must be paid to preferred stockholders in the second year before any dividend is paid to common stockholders is:

You are evaluating two different silicon wafer milling machines. the techron i costs $285,000, has a three-year life, and has pretax operating costs of $78,000 per year. the techron ii costs $495,000, has a five-year life, and has pretax operating costs of $45,000 per year. for both milling machines, use straight-line depreciation to zero over the project’s life and assume a salvage value of $55,000. if your tax rate is 24 percent and your discount rate is 11 percent, compute the eac for both machines.

Kelso electric is debating between a leveraged and an unleveraged capital structure. the all equity capital structure would consist of 40,000 shares of stock. the debt and equity option would consist of 25,000 shares of stock plus $280,000 of debt with an interest rate of 7 percent. what is the break-even level of earnings before interest and taxes between these two options?