Does the size of a company affect the rate of return it should earn? If smaller companies should earn a higher return than larger firms, then small utilities, because of their size, should be allowed to adjust the rates they charge to customers.By far the most notable and well-documented apparent anomaly in the stock market is the effect of company size on equity returns. The first study focusing on the impact that company size exerts on security returns was performed by Rolf W. Banz. Banz sorted New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) stocks into quintiles based on their market capitalization (price per share times number of shares outstanding), and calculated total returns for a value-weighted portfolio of the stocks in each quintile. His results indicate that returns for companies from the smallest quintile surpassed all other quintiles, as well as the Standard & Poor's 500 and other large stock indices. A number of other researchers have replicated Banz's work in other countries; nevertheless, a consensus has not yet been formed on why small stocks behave as they do.
One explanation for the higher returns is the lack of information on small companies. Investors must search more diligently for data. For small utilities, investors face additional obstacles, such as a smaller customer base, limited financial resources, and a lack of diversification across customers, energy sources, and geography. These obstacles imply a higher investor return.
The Flaw in CAPM
One of the more common cost of equity models used in practice today is the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). The CAPM describes the expected return on any company's stock as proportional to the amount of systematic risk an investor assumes. The traditional CAPM formula can be stated as:
Rs = [bs x RP] + Rf
where: