There is another major difference between the garden variety of bond and our new exotic 12 percent “equity bond” that comes to the Wall Street costume ball dressed in a stock certificate.
In the usual case, a bond investor receives his entire coupon in cash and is left to reinvest it as best he can. Our stock investor’s equity coupon, in contrast, is partially retained by the company and is reinvested at whatever rates the company happens to be earning. In other words, going back to our corporate universe, part of the 12 percent earned annually is paid out in dividends and the balance is put right back into the universe to earn 12 percent also.
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But on their retained earnings, investors could earn 12 percent. In effect, earnings retention allowed investors to buy at book value part of an enterprise that, in the economic environment then existing, was worth a great deal more than book value.
It was a situation that left very little to be said for cash dividends and a lot to be said for earnings retention. Indeed, the more money that investors thought likely to be reinvested at the 12 percent rate, the more valuable they considered their reinvestment privilege, and the more they were willing to pay for it.
