Weighted Average Maturity - WAM

  

Categories: Metrics, Investing, Bonds

See: WACC.

It's about bonds, not Shmoop writers.

You have a portfolio of bonds which lovingly produce cash income to you in the form of semi-annual interest payments. Some come due in 2 years; some in 5, some in 10, some in 20, etc. Add 'em all up. Adjust by size of issue (that is, the $2 million coming due in 2 years has a much higher weighted average than the $1 million coming due in 5 years).

So do the math: duration (i.e. years from coming due) times the amount coming due, and you get the weighting. Maybe, in this portfolio, that weighted average is 3.7 years.

What does it mean? It just means that the weighted midpoint of your portfolio is a bit under 4 years, and that 8 years from now, the lion's share of your bonds will have matured and paid you back your principal, and you'll have to go yield-hunting to get that dough reinvested.

Unless you're really nervous about Everything, in which case you just find a big, fat, empty mattress and stuff it with soft, comfy $20s.

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and finance Allah shmoop weighted average contribution margin in multi

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product companies Well you want a company that makes salad

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dressings When you started out you had one product a

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meat flavored salad dressing for people who want to be

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vegan but missed the taste of meat and don't miss

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the guilt At that point it was relatively easy to

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attribute costs and margins He only had one product to

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worry about Eventually though you expanded You launched a second

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product a salad dressing that tastes like meat from endangered

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species black rhino twist and giant panda barbecue Mostly Well

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don't worry The flavors are all simulated with chemicals No

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animals were actually harmed in the making of this video

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Okay so figuring out contribution margin becomes more complicated Here

00:46

You use a weighted average contribution margin to let you

00:49

know which product has the higher margin or contribution to

00:52

your profits In any company you have two basic types

00:55

of expenses There are expenses that relate directly to your

00:57

product You're trying to make light these expenses air known

01:00

as cog zor costs of goods sold There are also

01:03

expenses that don't apply to a specific product but to

01:06

the cost of running the company as a whole Regular

01:09

people would call these expenses overhead But just like rappers

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and private detectives and old movies accountants have you know

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their own lingo They call these expenses S G N

01:19

A or sales general and administrative expenses Imagine for a

01:23

second that we're back when your company had only one

01:26

product You want to figure out how many bottles of

01:28

cell addressing you had to sell to reach break even

01:30

the cause for the salad dressings A buck fifty per

01:33

bottle that covers chemicals that make the meat flavor in

01:35

the herbs and spices and the things like the plastic

01:38

for the bottle and the printing of the labels and

01:40

all That stuff also covers the direct labor that goes

01:43

into making the bottles of dressing But you've got all

01:45

the overhead stuff you have to cover as well The

01:48

rent on your headquarters the advertising budget the CEO's salary

01:52

all that stuff All that overhead is DNA in accounting

01:55

slang and it adds up to three million bucks a

01:58

month You Sela Sela dressing for three dollars a bottle

02:00

to retailers so your gross profit or gross contribution per

02:04

bottle of dressing is a buck fifty right It cost

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you a buck Fifty in *** to make it yourself

02:08

for three dollars And you got a buck fifty leftover

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Well that buck fifty is known as contribution and its

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margin here is fifty percent the amount each bottle contributes

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Either too well paying the overhead costs or the bottom

02:19

line depending on how many items you're selling here right

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So you want to know how many bottles you need

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to sell to cover that three million dollars a month

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Take three million divided by the buck fifty and that

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gets you two million bottles Once you sell two million

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bottles you've covered your overhead nut and the gross profit

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then start to all fall to the bottom line Okay

02:37

simple enough But how about when you move on to

02:39

multiple products Those unattached overhead costs then get spread over

02:44

additional products so the math gets a lot more complicated

02:47

when you try to assign the amounts of overhead So

02:49

we enter the weighted average contribution margin Well basically you're

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taking multiple products and splitting the overhead across him The

02:56

weighted average comes in well because you need to split

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the overhead fairly You do so by looking at the

03:01

contribution margin for each product and putting it in context

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for the sales mix So you launch your second product

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You know that salad dressing that tastes like meat from

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endangered animals Endangered species flavor sells for four dollars two

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customers but cost to twenty five to make So the

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contribution It's a buck seventy five It's a more specialized

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flavor so you only sell half the volume of the

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original flavor If you sell two million bottles of original

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flavor to cover you're not well You can expect to

03:26

sell only one million bottles of the endangered species New

03:30

flavor You'LL earn contribution margin of a dollar fifty per

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bottle for the original or three million dollars total Meanwhile

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one million bottles of the new flavor will get you

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one point seven five million right They sold three million

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total bottles of dressing two million of the original self

03:45

and one million in the new stuff and you got

03:46

four Seventy five or four point seven five million to

03:50

apply to the overhead and or to the bottom line

03:52

Well four point seven five million divided by three million

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bottles gives you a weighted average of approximately a dollar

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fifty eight per bottle So how many total bottles and

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then need to be He sold the break even including

04:02

both the old stuff and the new stuff Well you

04:04

still have the three million dollars in overhead The overhead

04:06

didn't change weighted average contribution margin of a buck fifty

04:09

eight there so you get three million divided by the

04:11

dollar Fifty eight gives you about one point eight nine

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nine million bottles total to break even And if you're

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two to one product mix hold well then you'Ll likely

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sell about six hundred thirty three thousand bottles of the

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new stuff and about one point two six six million

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of the old stuff And that's the target you need

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to hit to make up your overhead cough some more

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than that number and you start working on product three

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A salad dressing that tastes like already extinct animals You

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know mammoths and dodos and there's really no accounting for

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taste But that's very different video

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