Pricing Inflation-Indexed Convertible Bonds with Credit

Abstract

Issuing convertible bonds has become a popular way of raising capital by corporations in the last few years. An important subgroup is convertibles linked to a price index or exchange rate. The valuation model of inflation-indexed (or equivalently foreign-currency) convertible bonds derived in this paper considers two sources of uncertainty allowing both the underlying stock and the consumer-price-index to be stochastic and incorporates credit risk in the analysis. We approximate the pricing equations by using a Rubinstein (1994) three-dimensional binomial tree, and we describe the numerical solution. We investigate the sensitivity of the theoretical values with respect to the characteristics of the issuer, the economic environment and the security's characteristics (number of principal payments). Moreover, we demonstrate the usefulness and the limitations of the pricing model by using inflation-indexed and foreign currency linked convertibles traded on the Tel-Aviv stock exchange.

Keywords: convertible bonds, credit spread, binomial tree, pricing, inflation