Using Financial and Macroeconomic Indicators to Forecast Sales of Large Development and Construction Firms

Abstract

Sales forecasting is a pivotal component of a corporation’s planning and control activities. Despite the panoply of approaches to sales forecasting, relatively few published studies in forecasting address firm-specific sales forecasting model development for the construction industry. While there is evidence that events in the macroeconomy significantly affect the construction market, most published studies on construction sales forecasts using S-curve models are unable to account for the economic climate. This study proposes an approach that employs financial and macroeconomic indicators to forecast sales of large development and construction corporations. First, by using data for 37 large development and construction firms listed on the construction sector of the Taiwan Stock Exchange between 1997 and 2006, hypothesis tests uncover useful relationships between firm sales and financial and macroeconomic indicators. Second, based on these relationships, a two-stage mathematical modeling procedure is used to develop firm-specific sales forecasting models for three of the sample firms. Finally, out-of-sample forecasting accuracy is evaluated using Theil’s U-statistic and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE).