1 · Company

Company name (optional) About / investor relations page (optional) Shown as a link next to the company name in the results below. If you click "Find comparable companies" below, the server also fetches this page's text as extra context for that search only — never for the WACC calc itself. Business description (optional) Along with the About page above (if filled in), sent to an AI/LLM model only to classify the business into known SGX/NYSE/HKEX industry categories — see below.

Real comps database, not a guess Searches a database of 5,010 real SGX/NYSE/HKEX companies. Results appear in the panel on the right, below the WACC build-up. This search cross-checks results across three independent AI/LLM models, so it takes longer than the rest of the calculator — typically around a minute. Also updates the debt-to-equity ratio (section 2) and equity beta (section 3) to this comp set's own figures.

Valuation date Functional currency Display only — enter every dollar figure below in this currency. WACC, cost of equity/debt, and coverage are dimensionless ratios and are unaffected by the choice. Country / tax jurisdiction Drives the corporate tax rate below (Tax Foundation, by country and valuation year) — independent of functional currency above.

2 · Capital structure

No market cap or absolute debt figure needed — weights come from a debt-to-equity ratio, defaulting to your comparable companies' own median leverage.

Debt-to-equity ratio (D/E) Defaults to the median D/E of the comparable companies found via section 1's search (freely editable); before running that search, defaults to the median across the whole comps universe. Corporate tax rate (%) Tax Foundation, Singapore, 2023

3 · Cost of equity (CAPM)

Traditional CAPM plus a size premium looked up from NYSE decile CAPM alpha (equal-weighted) — see the methodology panel.

Risk-free rate (%) MAS 10Y SGS, 2026-07 Equity beta Auto-filled from the average beta of your comparable companies (section 1) if you use that feature — freely editable afterward. Equity risk premium (%) STI vs. MAS 10Y SGS, rolling 10y, 2026-07 Rolling 10-year historical market excess return (market return minus risk-free rate, annualized) — follows the functional currency above, same as the risk-free rate. Override freely. Size premium NYSE decile CAPM alpha, equal-weighted Manually selected — pick the NYSE market-cap decile (boundaries shown in US$) that best matches this company's size.

4 · Cost of debt

Defaults to a synthetic credit rating of Aaa. Enter EBIT and interest expense on the right to determine the cost of debt from interest coverage instead. See the methodology panel for the full table.

Default rating

Synthetic credit rating Used unless EBIT and interest expense (right) are both entered.

Or determine from EBIT & interest expense

EBIT, latest FY (S$) Interest expense, latest FY (S$) Entering both overrides the default rating on the left.

Fill in the inputs and press Calculate WACC to see the build-up.

Don't want to fill this in yourself? Work with me → and I'll build it with you.

Comparable companies

Methodology

Cost of equity — CAPM + size premium

cost of equity = risk-free rate + beta × equity risk premium + size premium

Equity risk premium defaults to a rolling 10-year (120-month trailing) historical market excess return — the market's own monthly return minus the risk-free monthly rate, averaged over the trailing 120 months and annualized (×12) — computed separately for SGD (STI vs. MAS 10Y SGS), USD (NYSE Composite vs. FRED 10Y UST), and HKD (Hang Seng Index vs. FRED 10Y UST, reused per the HKD/USD peg — see below), following the functional currency you select. This replaces a previously-used static Damodaran point-in-time estimate with an actual, currency-specific historical figure — override if you have your own. Size premium is looked up from a market-cap decile table, not fitted continuously — see the next panel.

Size premium — NYSE decile lookup

decile CAPM alpha: D1 +1.3% … D10 +16.6% (10 buckets, largest→smallest)

Each NYSE market-cap decile's own equal-weighted CAPM alpha (actual return minus its expanding-window-beta-implied CAPM return), rolling 10-year window ending 2026–07 — a nearly monotonic ladder, unlike the SGX quintile study's non-monotonic "smile." See the full Size Premiums page for the chart, every decile's value, and the limitations (survivorship bias, uneven per-decile window coverage, robustness checks). Since the app no longer collects an absolute market cap, the decile is a manual pick (boundaries shown in US$ as a reference) rather than auto-selected.

Capital structure — comps median debt-to-equity

weights = D/E → D/(D+E) and E/(D+E), no market cap or absolute debt required

Defaults to the median debt-to-equity ratio across your comparable-company set (from each comp's own point-in-time debt and market-cap snapshot — see the next panel), or the median across the whole 5,010-company comps universe before any search has been run. Median rather than mean since D/E is heavily right-skewed by a handful of highly-levered outliers. Freely overridable — enter your own ratio in section 2 if you know the target's actual or intended capital structure. This also sidesteps the classic WACC circularity of needing the target's own market value of equity before you have a valuation.

Cost of debt — synthetic rating

interest coverage = EBIT ÷ interest expense → Damodaran small-cap rating bin → current credit spread → cost of debt = risk-free rate + spread

Rating bins: Damodaran's small-cap (<$5B) coverage-ratio table. Spreads: Damodaran's rating/default-spread table as of January 2026 (his own small-cap page's spread column was last dated January 2017 and is stale — current spreads are pulled from his more frequently updated country-premium page instead). A coverage ≤ 0.5 (including negative EBIT) is treated as distressed — not a meaningful going-concern borrowing cost, and this calculator will flag it rather than produce a cost of debt. The synthetic credit rating dropdown defaults to Aaa and determines the cost of debt on its own — entering EBIT and interest expense is what activates the interest-coverage calculation instead, overriding the default rating.

Comparable companies — two-stage classify + rate, not a live search

business description + fetched About-page text → an AI/LLM model picks matching industries from a fixed list → three independent AI/LLM models each rate 1–5 on comparability, combined by vote → only the top-rated shown, equity beta averaged in

If an About-page URL is filled in above, the server fetches and strips it to plain text and includes it alongside your business description — combining both gives the models more to work with than either alone. Stage 1 classifies the combined text into industry categories that exist verbatim in our own 5,010-company snapshot (yfinance sector/industry, 578 SGX + 1,866 NYSE + 2,566 HKEX) — it never names a company directly here, so it can't hallucinate a ticker. Stage 2 sends every company in those industries to three independent AI/LLM models in parallel, each rating comparability to your business (1 = not comparable, 5 = highly comparable) based on business model and market focus, not just the shared industry tag; each company's final rating is whichever value at least two of the three models agree on, or the median of the three if all disagree. Only companies rated 5 are shown (relaxed to 4, then 3, then 2 if fewer than 5 companies clear the higher bar). If a model is unavailable for a run, voting proceeds with the rest. Running three models in parallel is why this search takes noticeably longer than the rest of the calculator — expect roughly a minute. Equity beta (section 3) is then auto-filled via unlever/relever (Hamada): each shown comp's own 2-year weekly beta (falling back to 5-year monthly if none have a weekly figure) is unlevered using that comp's own debt/equity ratio and its own country's current corporate tax rate — a point-in-time debt and market-cap snapshot fetched per company, separate from the return history used for beta itself — the resulting asset betas are averaged across the comp set, then relevered once at your capital structure and tax rate (sections 2 & 4). This strips out each peer's own leverage before applying yours, rather than averaging raw equity betas that each embed a different, irrelevant capital structure. If the D/E ratio field (section 2) hasn't been given a value yet, or none of the matched comps have usable debt data, it falls back to a straight average of the comps' levered equity betas instead. The D/E ratio field (section 2) is also updated to this comp set's own median debt-to-equity ratio at the same time — see the capital-structure panel above. Both freely editable afterward. This is a starting point for your own comp set and beta/leverage estimate, not a substitute for judgment.

Cost of equity's size premium is built on a 20-year (2006–2026) NYSE price/return panel, 1,880 companies. Cost of debt is built on a 20-year SGX price/return panel and a 4–5 year (2021–2026, the ceiling on free annual income-statement data) SGX financials panel, 615 and 532 companies respectively — the two sides of this build-up currently come from different markets. Full analysis, caveats, and companion builds are documented separately.

WACC Calculator for SGX-Comparable Companies