Asset Tangibility and Financial Performance: A Time Series Evidence

Abstract

Since 1980s, firms’ asset investments have more or less tended to shift from tangible to intangible investments. This tendency is also valid for Turkish manufacturing firms. Despite the increasing importance of intangible asset investments, their role on financial performance is subject to considerable debate. These investments are riskier compared to tangible asset investments, and cannot easily be used as collateral in corporate borrowing. Tangible assets offering high guarantee are pledged as the primary source of collateral in corporate borrowing. Consequently, a firm with higher asset tangibility is likely to lower external financing costs, leading higher financial performance. This paper analyzes the effect of asset tangibility on financial performance of Turkish manufacturing sector covering 1990.Q3-2016.Q4. The stationarity of series and the cointegration relationship among them are tested by ADF (1979; 1981), KPSS (1992), and Zivot and Andrews (1992) unit root tests, and one-break Gregory and Hansen (1996) cointegration test. Long-run coefficients estimated by Stock and Watson (1993)’s DOLS methodology posit that while asset tangibility, financial leverage, liquidity and operating efficiency have significant and positive effects on financial performance till (and including) the break date; from this break date on, they affect financial performance negatively.