Operating Leverage and Margin of Safety
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Operating Leverage
Leverage, as a business term, refers to debt or to the borrowing of funds to finance the purchase of a company's assets. Business owners can use either debt or equity to finance or buy the company's assets. Using debt, or leverage, increases the company's risk of bankruptcy. It also increases the company's returns, specifically its return on equity. This is true because, if debt financing is used rather than equity financing equity is not diluted.
Investors in a business like the business to use debt financing but only up to a point. Beyond a certain point, investors get nervous about too much debt financing as it drives up the company's default risk (About.com)
Peavler, R. (n.d.) What is Leverage? About.com (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://bizfinance.about.com/od/pricingyourproduct/qt/what-is-leverage-and-business-financial-risk.htm
Questions for discussion:
Operating leverage and margin of safety are terms used in business, what do they mean? How is capacity and size relating to operating leverage? Can you identify other similar measurements that are useful from a managerial accounting perspective?
You do not need to discuss every question or comment mentioned above. Choose one or two relevant aspects for further investigation and share your knowledge with the class. Try to add information not previously discussed by others. Please, provide information (not merely opinions) backed up by details or examples. Your comments should be in your own words and Include references in APA format, if appropriate.
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Solution Summary
The response provides you a structured explanation of operating leverage and margin of safety. It also gives you the relevant references.
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Operating leverage means how revenue growth translates into growth in operating income. This is a measure of leverage and the risk related to a firm's operating income. Specifically it means that the business has a higher proportion of fixed costs and lower proportion of variable costs. For example, before the financial crisis the big three auto makers in the United States had a higher proportion of fixed costs and lower proportion of variable costs when compared with foreign based car makers(1). From a different perspective if a business makes a few sales and each sale provides a very high gross margin, it is said to be highly leveraged. On the other hand, if a business makes many sales with each sale contributing a very slight margin it is said to ...
Education
- BSc , University of Calcutta
- MBA, Eastern Institute for Integrated Learning in Management
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