Which of the following statements is CORRECT? The cost of new equity (re) could possibly be lower than the cost of retained earnings (rs) if the market risk premium, risk-free rate, and the company's beta all decline by a sufficiently large amount. We should use historical measures of the component costs from prior financings that are still outstanding when estimating a company's WACC for capital budgeting purposes. Its cost of retained earnings is the rate of return stockholders require on a firm's common stock. The component cost of preferred stock is expressed as rp(1 - T), because preferred stock dividends are treated as fixed charges, similar to the treatment of interest on debt. In the WACC calculation, we must adjust the cost of preferred stock (the market yield) to reflect the fact that 70% of the dividends received by corporate investors are excluded from their taxable income