Estimación de la tasa de descuento WACC para el sector eléctrico en Ecuador

Abstract

This paper estimates the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for the electricity sector in Ecuador. For this purpose, available information on companies engaged in the generation and/or distribution of electric power in Latin America is used. These companies serve as comparables to the Ecuadorian case because there are no publicly traded companies in the electric power sector in Ecuador, and even if there were, the Ecuadorian stock market is not sufficiently liquid. Thus, 35 companies from Latin American stock markets with the highest market capitalization were used. Thus, this work is based on the CAPM model for the calculation of the cost of equity, as well as on the fundamentals of Modigliani and Miller for the calculation of the WACC. Subsequently, the main result obtained is that the weighted average cost of capital for the electricity sector in Ecuador is 9.67%, which is in line with the WACC of the International Energy Agency. Therefore, the estimated rate could be useful as reference data for possible concessions, privatizations or investments in the sector. It is worth mentioning that the proposed methodology for estimating the WACC has not yet been carried out at the country level.