The Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) represents the average cost of financing a company's debt and equity. There are two approches to calculating it, one based on the "Build-up" approach, the other on the Capital Assets Pricing Model (CAPM) approach.
$$\text{WACC} = C_e \times E + C_d \times D$$
where $C_d$ is the after-tax cost of debt, E and D the proportion of equity and debt in a firm based on market value, and $C_e$ is the cost of equity, which, using the CAPM approach, is calculated with:
$$C_e = R_f + \beta(R_m) + R_s + \text{Risk} + \text{Firm Risk}$$
where $R_f$ is risk-free rate, $R_m$ is the market premium, $R_s$ is the company size premium, Risk the country risk premium, Firm Risk the firm-specific risk and $\beta$ is a measure of the systematic risk, usually of the industry sector, in comparison to the market as a whole.
According to this paper, most companies do it wrong.
waccR
make sit super easy to get the data for the US:
library(waccR) # WACC: wacc_usa <- wacc() head(wacc_usa)
# Industry Betas (US): betas_usa <- betas() head(betas_usa)
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