THE COST OF CAPITAL FOR THE FISHERIES-AQUACULTURAL SECTOR IN CHILE

In this study the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) is estimated for the Chilean fisheries-aquacultural sector which is an essential tool for investors' decision making. For this purpose a group of companies that are representative of the sector is considered. For them, both the cost of each source of capital (debt and equity) and the capital structure (financial leverage) were estimated. With respect to the cost of equity capital, in recent years diverse approaches have been put forth to correct the bias resulting from the low integration of emergent economies to the global economy. In this study three approaches are compared: the local CAPM, global CAPM and a less traditional correction method proposed by Godfrey and Espinoza (1996). The results confirm that the latter procedure produces estimations of the cost of equity that are much more realistic than those obtained with the other two. Using this method we estimated the annual WACC for the sector in the study to be 19.6%.