Causal analysis of determinants influencing the Economic Value Added (EVA) – a case of Polish entity

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionIn recent years, we have seen more and more pressure on the boards of companies to show a rise in the value of their company in the context of shareholder value. Shareholders are directly interested in the size of generated values. Managers should systematically follow information about value of the company, so that they would be able to make financial, organizational, marketing and allocative decisions through which an increase in company value will be obtained.The book value of the company illustrates the value of its assets in terms of the balance sheet on a specific day, which is a major drawback of such an as- sessment because it relates to historical data, and an analysis based upon them is retrospective in nature. The economic value informs about the profitability strength of the company within a given time horizon, which increases the usefulness of this instrument in the process of managerial decisions.Management aimed at increasing the economic value requires determining and understanding factors, on which the generated value depends. For this purpose, it is necessary to perform analysis with different degrees of detail. Such an analysis can be carried out at the level of the basic equation for the economic value, or this equation can be transformed analogically to the du Pont formula. Also, an analysis can be conducted according to the most basic components that create the ultimate economic value (starting with revenues from sales and incurred variable and fixed costs). It is difficult to say what level of detail is the best. It seems that in each case the decision should be taken by decision makers.The aim of this article is to use a modified method of partial differences with Taylor series to explain the impact of various factors on the EVA change on the example of one of the largest companies in the mining and metallurgical industry in Poland. Using this method, managers are acquainted with not only factors influenced the EVA change, but also the extent to which these factors explain changes. This will allow them (where possible) to react and control some factors that influence the growth of EVA. In most cases, calculations can be limited to determining the effect of individual factors, although in some cases the effect of combined factors should be identified.The assumption is that although it can be to some extent determined which factors affect the EVA change, every company is in a different financial condition, so the impact of various factors on the EVA change is different. Majority of methods is based on a regression analysis made for a smaller or larger group of companies. Usually the analyses concern specific sector of publicly listed companies, e.g. China's Security Market [Chen & Qiao 2008], Telecom Operators in China [Li & Tang 2011], Consumer Product Sector (Indian Market) [Deene & Balappa 2007], JSE Securities Exchange (South Africa) [Hall 2002], Indonesia Stock Exchange [Khadafi & Heikal 2014], Bucharest Stock Exchange Market [Tabara & Vasiliu 2013]. However, the results presented in these studies differ (sometimes) significantly. One can therefore conclude that the factors influencing EVA vary in different countries and different sectors. According to the author, these factors are also different for each company. Therefore, it seems that it is pointless to use regression analysis for a set of companies. These factors should be identified for each company individually. For this purpose, the deterministic methods of cause and effect analysis can be used, however, their limitation should be taken into account. Among these methods, perhaps only consecu- tive substitution method is used to determine the factors of EVA change [Bluszcz & Kijewska 2016; Trandafir 2015; Petrescu & Apostol 2009; Burja & Burja 2009]. While this method is relatively simple, the influence of substitutions order on the results is its disadvantage. …