El Capitan Foods has a capital structure of 36% debt and 64% equity, its tax rate is 25%, and its beta (leveraged) is 1.25. Based on the Hamada equation, what would the firm's beta be if it used no debt, i.e., what is its unlevered beta, b_U?

a. 0.98

b. 0.54

c. 0.80

d. 1.10

e. 0.88

Firm A is very aggressive in its use of debt to leverage up its earnings for common stockholders, whereas Firm NA is not aggressive and uses no debt. The two firms' operations are identical--they have the same total investor-supplied capital, sales, operating costs, and EBIT. Thus, they differ only in their use of financial leverage (w_d). Both companies are small, so they are not subject to the interest deduction limitation. Based on the following data, how much higher or lower is A's ROE than that of NA, i.e., what is ROE_A - ROE_NA? Do not round your intermediate calculations.

Applicable to Both Firms			Firm A's Data			Firm NA's Data
Capital	$240,000		wd	50%		wd	0%
EBIT	$40,000		Int. rate	12%		Int. rate	10%
Tax rate	25%

a. 7.25 p.p.

b. 4.67 p.p.

c. 12.50 p.p.

d. -4.50 p.p.

e. 3.50 p.p.