Pushing out debt maturities

I wanna preface my question by acknowledging I’m being facetious, but when companies issue debt to retire upcoming maturities, isn’t that sort of like a Ponzi scheme? Essentially what they’re doing is taking money from new investors and paying out old investors, and the cycle continues.

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Not really, company's typically sustain debt proportional to their cash flows and strategic objectives, optimizing liquidity and cost of capital. Even large corporates may be AA and have sizable one-off capex needs or cyclicality. Wealthy individuals (or consumers with mortgages and lines of credit) do the exact same thing. It's more efficient and also benefits you from a tax perspective. Very little benefit from carrying no debt for most companies. Debt remains proportional to cash flows, not ever increasing beyond the ability to repay. 

 

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