PERFORMANCE MEASURES AND WEALTH CREATION IN AN EMERGING MARKET: THE CASE OF SAUDI ARABIA

Abstract

This study examines the association between stock returns and wealth creation (as measured by Market Value Added, MVA) on the one hand, and various performance measures of joint stock companies in Saudi Arabia. These measures include traditional accounting measures; Earning Per Share (EPS), Return on Equity (ROE), and Cash Flow (CF), as well as a relatively recent measure; the Economic Value Added (EVA). The study reveals strong links between various traditional accounting measures and show that those measures give similar indication of a company's overall performance. The results indicate that MVA and stock returns are associated with traditional accounting measures, but not with EVA. However, EPS is found to dominate other measures of performance with respect to its association with stock returns and MVA. The implications of this study are that investors in the Saudi market are most likely using simple traditional accounting performance measures in their valuing of companies, and hence more efforts should be directed to enforcing disclosure requirements for these measures.