ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION ABOUT COMPANIES ON THEIR STOCK QUOTES: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ACTIVITIES OF COMPANIES PARTICIPATING IN KUWAIT AND SAUDI ARABIA STOCK EXHANGES

Abstract

Market Share Prices have important roles in determining the performance of the companies. Companies aim continuously to have a high market share prices for many goals. Therefore, understanding all variables that affect share prices is vital for investors. To examine if the Accounting Information affects market share prices, we studied the effect of some financial ratios determined from accounting statements on share prices for listed firms on Kuwait Stock Exchange and Saudi Stock Exchange. For Kuwait stock exchange, the quantitative methodology relied on the panel multiple regression through compiling and analyzing the Accounting Information and Market Share Price using secondary data for the period 2011 – 2018. The independent variables are Return on Equity (ROE), Earning per Share (EPS), and Dividend per Share(DPS) and the dependent variable is Market Share Price (MSP) of premier listed companies on Kuwait stock exchange. The analysis of the coefficient of correlation (R) shows that the correlation is very strong among DPS and EPS, DPS and ROE, EPS and ROE whilst it is strong among MSP and ROE, MSP and DPS, and EPS and MSP. Moreover, the variation of the three variables affects strongly the variation of MSP significantly on 1%. Therefore, there is a cause-effect relation between Accounting Information and MSP. Moreover, this paper examines the impact of return and leverage ratios on the Market Share Price of listed firms on Saudi Stock Exchange. The panel-data approach of fixed effect is used during the period of 2015 to 2018. To achieve the purpose of research return on equity as a proxy for profitability information, debt to equity ratio as a proxy for profitability ratio and natural logarithm of total assets as a proxy for the firms’ size are considered as dependent variables while market share price is considered as an independent variable. The results indicate that debt ratio and degree of financial leverage is negatively determining the share price while size has significant positive impact on the share. Debt to equity ratio is insignificant in effecting share price.