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In finance, leverage, also known as gearing, is any technique involving borrowing funds to buy an investment.. Financial leverage is named after a lever in physics, which amplifies a small input force into a greater output force, because successful leverage amplifies the smaller amounts of money needed for borrowing into large amounts of profit.
Operating leverage can also be measured in terms of change in operating income for a given change in sales (revenue). The Degree of Operating Leverage (DOL) can be computed in a number of equivalent ways; one way it is defined as the ratio of the percentage change in Operating Income for a given percentage change in Sales (Brigham 1995, p. 426):
The ratio measures a company's capital structure, financial solvency, and degree of leverage, at a particular point in time. [1] The data to calculate the ratio are found on the balance sheet. Practitioners use different definitions of debt: Any interest-bearing liability to qualify. All liabilities, including accounts payable and deferred income.
Various leverage or gearing ratios are closely watched by financial analysts to assess the amount of debt in a company's capital structure. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] The Miller and Modigliani theorem argues that the market value of a firm is unaffected by a change in its capital structure.
Closely related to leveraging, the ratio is also known as risk, gearing or leverage. The two components are often taken from the firm's balance sheet or statement of financial position (so-called book value ), but the ratio may also be calculated using market values for both, if the company's debt and equity are publicly traded , or using a ...
Leverage is defined as the ratio of the asset value to the cash needed to purchase it. The leverage cycle can be defined as the procyclical expansion and contraction of leverage over the course of the business cycle. The existence of procyclical leverage amplifies the effect on asset prices over the business cycle.
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The formulas are not correct if the firm follows a constant leverage policy, i.e. the firm rebalances its capital structure so that debt capital remains at a constant percentage of equity capital, which is a more common and realistic assumption than a fixed dollar debt (Brealey, Myers, Allen, 2010). If the firm is assumed to rebalance its debt ...