Optimal Credit Rating with Regard to Capital Structure : A Mixed Method Study on the Swedish Real Estate Market

Abstract: In Sweden, the demand for official credit ratings has historically not been as substantial as in other parts of the world. This due to the fact that Swedish banks up until recently provided the market with shadow ratings. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) started investigating shadow ratings in August 2016 and decided that Nordic banks issuing shadow ratings were against the new directives because they were not registered as rating agencies. The Nordic corporate bond market has grown rapidly since the financial crisis and many bond issuers have avoided the organizational cost associated with obtaining and maintaining a credit rating. In 2016, more than half of Nordic bonds were issued without a credit rating, while today, the majority of Nordic bonds are issued with credit rating. Capital structure and specifically the goal of locating the optimal capital structure has, since the breakthrough of Modigliani and Miller in 1958, been the center of attention for a lot of research and the issue is of great interest for both academicians and practitioners. In practice, there are many factors that affect the decision of what leverage and capital structure a company decides to aim for. Among the factors are growth opportunities, firm size and profitability. With the base in corporate financial theory, the purpose of this study is to explore what factors that influence Swedish real estate companies regarding their decisions of capital structure and credit rating. With the method of semi-structured interviews and quantitative simulations, the study aims to understand why Swedish real estate companies are divided in their strategies about credit ratings and to explore if the firms have suboptimal credit ratings with respect to their capital structure. The quantitative part indicates that the optimal credit rating grade is A- with regard to the capital structure, for the examined Swedish real estate firms, under the current market conditions. The uncertainty of the optimal credit rating grade is displayed in a sensitivity analysis. The qualitative part of the study indicates that the rating of A- could plausibly be the optimal credit rating level and that it most likely is above the investment grade. The qualitative part further sheds light on the strategies of Swedish real estate firms and gives the market and investors insight to understand the underlying factors for why firms aim for different ratings. One can conclude that leverage and weighted average cost of capital are important factors when it comes to decisions regarding credit rating grades, but is often trumped by the quality label of credit ratings, the demand for different grades, the signals a upgrade/downgrade sends to the market and the possibility to reach the rating institutes requirements.