Corporate Life Cycle and Cost of Equity Capital

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the corporate life cycle stages on the cost of equity of firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. In this study we used Dickinson's Model (2011) to determine the corporate life cycle stages and Gordon Model to calculate cost of equity. In this study, we first took samples using the cash flow statement data (including cash flow from operating activities, cash flow from investing activities and cash flow from finance activities) and separated the firms in the growth stage, maturity stage and decline stage, then, using multivariate regression analysis and mean comparison tests, hypotheses were studied and tested. The results of 110 firms (990 company - year) from 2006 to 2014 shows that the firms, cost of equity in different stages of the life cycle (growth, maturity, decline) are significantly different. The results also show that in the decline stage the cost of equity is at the highest level and in the maturity stage it is at the lowest level.