The required return on the stock of Moe's Pizza is 10.4 percent and aftertax required return on the company's debt is 3.28 percent. The company's market value capital structure consists of 65 percent equity. The company is considering a new project that is less risky than current operations and it feels the risk adjustment factor is minus 1.5 percent. The tax rate is 35 percent. What is the required return for the new project

The WACC or weighted average cost of capital is the cost of a firm's capital structure. The capital structure can consist of one or more of the following components namely debt, preferred stock and common equity. The WACC is calculated as follows,

WACC = wD * rD * (1 - tax rate) + wP * rP + wE * rE

Where,

w represents the weight of each component
r represents the cost of each component
D, P and E represents debt, preferred stock and common equity
rD * (1 - tax rate) is the after tax cost of debt

We first need to calculate the WACC of the company and then adjust it for the new project.

WACC = 35% * 3.28% + 65% * 10.4%

WACC = 7.908%

As the new project is less risky and has an adjustment factor of -1.5%, the required rate of return for the new project will be,

WACC - new project = 7.908% - 1.5%

WACC - new project = 6.408% rounded off to 6.41%