Leverage-induced profitability in Bangladeshi firms: An empirical analysis

Abstract

The intent of the inquiry is to extensively examine the impact of leveraged financing on firm performance in Bangladesh, revealing the subtle dynamics of leverage-induced profitability and emphasizing the importance of a balanced debt and equity structure for financial sustainability in emerging markets. To explore how financial leverage in an entity’s capital structure affects a business’s financial sustainability and analyze how it may be used to improve company performance, the study has employed a 22-year data set (2000–2021) from the Dhaka Stock Exchange. To perform Fixed Effect Regression based on the Hausman test, ‘Firm performance’ is used as the regressand, which was further proxied by Earnings per Share, Return on Assets, Return on Equity, and Basic Earning Power respectively. Alternatively, proxy variables for the regressor ‘Financial leverage’ include Debt-to-Equity, Debt-to-Asset, Current Liability-to-Equity, and Current Liability-to-Asset. The test has shown that leverage in the capital structure could lead to both favorable and unfavorable effects in emerging countries like Bangladesh. Age, along with Debt-to-Asset, has shown a substantial negative impact on Earnings per Share. Also, the Debt-to-Asset and Current Liability-to-Asset negatively affect the Return on Assets. However, Debt-to-Equity, Current Liability-to-Equity and Size have a substantial positive impact, however Age has a negative effect on Return on Equity. Lastly, Debt-to-Asset has shown a positive impact on Basic Earning Power. The findings suggest that balancing debt and equity is crucial to benefit from leverage-induced profitability, and the models can be extended or amended across industries to expand the study on this persistent leverage-induced profitability argument.