Loss-making Firms Research Articles

Working capital management under supply chain disruption: The role of government response during economic uncertainty

Supply chain finance (SCF) stems from supply chain management (SCM), where firms deploy various approaches (e.g., inventory management and working capital management) to maximize firm performance. Firms utilize working capital management (WCM) to optimize their operating cash to create firm value. This study focuses on how firms could deploy the WCM approach through receivables, inventories, and payables to maximize long-term and short-term firm performance. It is worth noting that the components in WCM serve different roles in firm performance where shareholders value shorter receivable periods to avoid customer default risk, but firms could benefit from long receivable periods for short-term operation performance. In addition, governments from various countries implemented different policies to reduce adverse economic impacts of the pandemic. The sample includes publicly listed manufacturing companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Australia where different levels of government response have been observed. By using Ordinal Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis and adopting government policy as moderator, the results show that the government actions during the pandemic serve as the mitigating effect in the manufacturing supply chain. The analyses also show that the government policies implemented have successfully supported supply chain resilience during pandemic, especially to loss-making firms from decreased firm value.

A Panel Study on Capital Structure and Profitability in the MENA Region Tourism Industry

Finding the optimal debt-equity balance is always challenging as it impacts performance and financial risk. Moreover, this balance changes with the industry. Our study aims to assess the impact of capital structure (CS) on firm profitability in the tourism industry. The sample consists of 71 listed firms from the tourism sector of the MENA region. Through a quantitative approach, we use pooled and static panel regression, examining the annual financial published data of the selected firms from 2010 to 2021 sourced through the Refinitiv database. The results show that an increase (decrease) of the debt (equity) portion in the capital structure impacts both ROA and ROE negatively and significantly, even after controlling for asset tangibility, size, liquidity, inflation, COVID-19 effects, and loss-making firms in the sample. The findings suggest that tourism firms in the MENA region should avoid an aggressive capital structure policy. To our knowledge, this study is the first one to examine the impact of CS on the profitability of the tourism industry for the entire MENA region, thus being of great value to firm-level policymakers and investors in the region.

Accrual-Based Earnings Management and the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this study, we document the accrual-based earnings management of Old Economy firms and New Economy firms (firms in the technology industry) and loss-making firms (firms with negative earnings in the pre-pandemic year, 2019) and profit firms in each economy, respectively, before, during, and in the recovery year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using both univariate and difference-in-difference regression analyses, we find that old and new economy firms adopt different accrual-based earnings management, and Old Economy Loss firms changed their accrual-based earnings management the most during and in the recovery of the pandemic. During the 2020 pandemic, Old Economy Loss reported the lowest amount of accrual-based discretionary accruals. This suggests that Old Economy Loss firms are engaged in the most conservative approach to reporting their earnings, consistent with the big bath proposition. In the recovery year of the pandemic, 2021, we find that accrual-based earnings management reversed, with the old economy losing firms reporting the highest amounts of discretionary accruals. However, we do not find that the explanatory power of earnings on the variance of stock prices for the old economy loss firms is affected by their discretionary change in accounting accruals.

Gender Diversity and Human Capital Efficiency in Australian Institutions: The Moderating Role of Workforce Environment Quality

We examine the relationship between board gender diversity and human capital efficiency and further consider the moderating role of workforce environment quality from the perspectives of profit-making and loss-making firms. Using a sample of 2700 firm-year observations from listed Australian firms for the period 2008–2019, we found a positive relationship between the presence of females on boards and human capital efficiency which was more pronounced for loss-making firms as against profit-making firms. Additionally, the relationship between gender diversity and human capital efficiency was moderated by the quality of workforce environment with the moderating effect being more pronounced for loss-making firms as compared to profit-making firms. Board gender diversity plays a substitutive role in the management of human capital efficiency for loss-making firms where investment in human capital development is limited.

Role of institutional investors in reviving loss-making firms: evidence from India

PurposeThe present study aims to verify whether there is a positive (negative) role being played by the institutional investors on the loss-making companies' performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employ panel data regression and two-step system generalised method of moments (SYS-GMM) to test the above objective.FindingsThe empirical results clearly show that no positive relation is found between institutional investors and loss-making companies' performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of the study might have significant implications for firms to improve the firms' operational performance [return on assets (ROA)]. Also, the firm's financial performance [return on equity (ROE)] could be improved by increasing profitability which will reflect in the share prices of the firms whereby the performance can build the investors' confidence over the firm. Market performance (Tobin's Q) could be increased by providing more attractive offers and discounts to customers to capture the business opportunities available in the market.Practical implicationsThe overall findings might have for reaching implications in the manufacturing sector with regard to allowing (disallowing) institutional investors.Social implicationsThe results of the study may help both companies and institutional investors.Originality/valueThis is the maiden attempt to study whether loss-making companies could be positively (negatively) impacted by the arrival of sophisticated institutional investors [foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and domestic institutional investors (DIIs)]. Further, this study is largely different from previous studies in terms of using new variables which are related to firm characteristics and valuation multiples. Further, seeing if the institutional investors tend to enhance the firm performance is curious.

Value relevance of earnings and book value of equity in profit versus loss reporting firms: significance of intangible intensity

PurposeThis study aims to investigate how the intangible intensive nature of firms affects the value relevance of earnings and the book value of equity between profit- and loss-reporting firms. The study also examines how firms’ intangible intensity affects the value relevance of R&D outlays between profit- and loss-reporting firms.Design/methodology/approachAn empirical analysis based on Ohlson’s (1995) framework is used. A total of 54,421 firm-year observations of Indian listed firms from financial years 1992–2016 constitute the study sample.FindingsThe findings suggest that the difference in the value relevance of earnings and the book value of equity between profit- and loss-reporting firms is more significant in non-intangible intensive firms than in intangible firms. Specifically, earnings are more value relevant in profit-reporting and non-intangible intensive firms, whereas book value of equity is more value relevant in loss-reporting and intangible intensive firms. The results also suggest that the difference in the incremental value relevance of R&D information between profit- and loss-making firms is higher in intangible intensive firms than in non-intangible intensive firms.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study can help managers, standard-setters and investors make effective decisions.Originality/valueThis study offers insights into the impact of intangible intensity on the value relevance of aggregated and disaggregated accounting information between profit- and loss-making firms in institutional settings where capitalization of R&D expenditures is allowed.

The effect of real earnings smoothing on corporate labour investment

This study investigates the impact of real earnings smoothing on labour investment efficiency. Our results show that real earnings smoothing is significantly associated with higher labour investment efficiency, supporting the private information signalling view of earnings smoothing. We also fine information asymmetry as a plausible channel through which real earnings smoothing improves labour investment efficiency. Further analyses find that the positive impact of real earnings smoothing on labour investment efficiency is primarily driven by the informational component rather than the garbling component of earnings smoothness, and is more pronounced for financially constrained firms with equity-based financing incentives and loss-making firms. Our paper advances the understanding of corporate labour investment and the benefits of real earnings smoothing.

COVID-19 pandemic resilience: an analysis of firm valuation and disclosure of sustainability practices of listed firms

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the effect of firms’ sustainability practices on firm performance and valuation during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachUsing a sample of Australian listed firms from 2011 to 2021, the authors perform textual analysis on sustainability practices from annual reports and sustainability report disclosures and include this variable in various regression models that assess firm valuation. The authors also use propensity score matching and Heckman two-stage regression methodology to address endogeneity concerns.FindingsThe authors find that firms disclosing sustainability practices exhibit higher market valuations relative to other firms. Specifically, loss-making firms exhibit higher market valuation during the COVID-19 crisis relative to prior period. The authors also observe a negative association between sustainability practices and firm performance proxied by return on assets. The findings suggest that engagement in sustainable practices helps loss-making firms remain resilient during the pandemic. In addition, the authors find that the positive relation between sustainability practices and firm value is stronger among firms with a higher level of annual report readability.Originality/valueConsidering the conflicting evidence in the literature on the economic benefits of sustainability practices, this study takes advantage of the heterogeneity in corporate practices and provides empirical evidence that a firm’s sustainability practices can build economic resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The authors believe the findings of the study is timely in informing the regulators and standard-setters on changes in reporting required to increase sustainability in the business practices.

Picking Losers: How Career Incentives Undermine Industrial Policy in Chinese Cities

Rapid economic growth in China with considerable market intervention has led to renewed interest in the efficacy of industrial policy. Have industrial policies helped Chinese firms overcome market failures and boosted productivity, or have they distorted markets and undermined creative destruction? This paper explores these questions in the specific context of local implementation by studying the targeting of financial favors and the relationship of such targeting to local political incentives. Using unique and largely unexplored quasi-census firm-level data from annual tax surveys in China from 2007 to 2015, this paper demonstrates that financial favors disproportionately target loss-making, larger, older, and less productive firms. It then argues that short-term career incentives facing local officials explain this sub-optimal targeting, showing that promotion likelihood for city leaders increases with higher levels of ‘excess’ financial favors to firms, particularly when these favors are provided to loss-making firms. Finally, the paper estimates costs to the Chinese economy from misallocated financial support by showing that financial favors are associated with lower levels of firm entry and lower productivity growth. The paper contributes to the literature on industrial policy, political incentives, and misallocation, and has important implications for China’s future growth and transition.

The value relevance of risk-related disclosure: Does the tone of disclosure matter?

This paper investigates whether risk-related disclosure, which includes aggregate risk disclosure and its tone, including upside and downside risk disclosures, is value relevant for investors in the UK market. Based on 1941 firm-year observations for nonfinancial firms listed on the FTSE All-Share, we employ fixed-effect estimations and find that the value relevance of aggregate risk information is not statistically observable unless a distinction is made in its tone. Specifically, upside- (downside-) risk disclosure significantly increases (decreases) stock prices. We also find that the value relevance of risk information exhibits cross-sectional variations conditional on firms’ growth and profitability. In particular, we find an asymmetric response of stock prices to upside- and downside-risk disclosures for high-growth firms but not those with low growth. In addition, profit-making firms, but not loss-making firms, provide upside and downside disclosures that significantly influence stock prices. Our paper contributes to the extant research on value relevance and risk reporting by providing new evidence on the extent to which, and how, combining the accounting numbers that are examined extensively in prior research with non-accounting information (i.e., risk information) is important for observing value relevance. Our paper also advances prior research on the usefulness of risk disclosure by looking at the tone of this information and how the market responds to each type of disclosure.

Earnings and Firm Value in the Presence of Real Options

ABSTRACT To explain the empirically documented nonlinear, non-monotonic relationship between earnings and firm value, it suffices to assume that firms continually take profit-maximizing decisions in response to newly arriving investment opportunities. The real options embedded in these opportunities create hysteresis effects that lead to the well-known, but so far poorly understood, negative earnings-to-value relation among loss-making firms. Optionality also predicts the future growth component of firm value to be a decreasing function of earnings among highly profitable firms. More generally, the dynamic options model implies an earnings-to-value mapping that can be non-monotonic even over narrow earnings intervals. The commonly used linear earnings-response estimation may, therefore, be a poor approximation even locally. These phenomena arise because optionality makes past and future earnings the product of an unobservable flow of opportunities and decisions whose time dynamics cannot be described by direct linear past-to-future extrapolation.

Value relevance of reported financials of NSE listed companies

The purpose of this paper is to examine value relevance of accounting information in Indian stock market. The study focuses exclusively on the listed firms under Nifty 100 from 2001 to 2015, and uses price and returns models. The findings under both models suggest that accounting information has the significant ability in influencing stock prices and stock returns during the entire period covered by this study. Further analysis shows that book value per share is more relevant for loss-making firms while earnings per share are more relevant for profit-making firms. Based on industry classification, the value relevance of accounting information reported is high in metal industry, infrastructure, energy, financial services, automobiles and services industry and low in consumption and pharma industry. Study concludes that accounting information is relevant for investment decisions and investors must focus on this information to make informed investment decisions.

Last chance for a big bath: managing deferred taxes under IAS 12 in Brazilian listed firms

ABSTRACT This study investigates whether Brazilian loss-making firms manage deferred income tax as a form of big bath strategy. "Big bath” is a strategy in which a firm manages earnings by intentionally recording large non-recurring losses. We found original evidence supporting the hypothesis of big bath through the managing of deferred taxes under CPC 32/IAS 12. Deferred tax expenses can be used as a tool for reducing earnings because of the subjectivity and timing involved. To analyze the excess of deferred taxes, we propose a particular research strategy that is based on the increased homogeneity of accounting standards and tax regulation in Brazilian listed firms. This analysis provides new evidence of big bath adjustments that was never described before in the literature. We analyze 226 Brazilian listed firms for the 2011-2015 period. We designed a linear model to estimate deferred tax excess that is based on the conditional independence between treatment and effect under accounting standard CPC32/IAS 12. For our baseline analysis, we used least squares with controlling covariates. We also used two-stage least squares to control for omitted variables bias. This paper finds evidence that Brazilian firms can manage deferred income tax as a form of big bath. Results indicate that loss-making firms disclose significantly higher excesses of net deferred tax expenses, and that these excesses increase with losses.

Value relevance of reported financials of NSE listed companies

The purpose of this paper is to examine value relevance of accounting information in Indian stock market. The study focuses exclusively on the listed firms under Nifty 100 from 2001 to 2015, and uses price and returns models. The findings under both models suggest that accounting information has the significant ability in influencing stock prices and stock returns during the entire period covered by this study. Further analysis shows that book value per share is more relevant for loss-making firms while earnings per share are more relevant for profit-making firms. Based on industry classification, the value relevance of accounting information reported is high in metal industry, infrastructure, energy, financial services, automobiles and services industry and low in consumption and pharma industry. Study concludes that accounting information is relevant for investment decisions and investors must focus on this information to make informed investment decisions.

Beating a Random Walk

On average, across the years 1960 to 2018, more than seven percent of firms on the Compustat Annual data set, which had earnings observations in year t did not have earnings observations in year t+1. We consider two effects of these disappearing data on inferences about earnings attributes. First, the extent to which earnings revert to the mean is considerably overstated, particularly for loss-making firms. Second, when we replace the missing observations via three alternative imputations and obtain forecasts from cross-sectional earnings forecasting models, we cannot reject the null hypothesis that, for the completed sample of observations, earnings follow a random walk. Whereas this null can be rejected when we restrict the analyses to firms that do not disappear from Compustat. These effects are very evident for firms that are smaller than the median market capitalization, much less so for those that are larger. This suggests that researchers should consider focusing their analyses on these large firms, which comprise more than 97 percent of the capitalization of the Compustat population.

Signaling Power of Corporate Name Change: A Case of Indian Firms

In India, every year a large number of firms change their name. This raises a question that does name change convey any signal of better future prospects. The paper examines market response to name change announcements for firms listed on Bombay Stock Exchange. The paper also examines the predictive ability of firm-specific characteristics in determining the nature of market response to the name change announcement. The finding reveals positive and significant average abnormal returns around event date. An increase in cumulative average abnormal return few days before the announcement date has also been observed. Such a market reaction before the event day may be attributed to the leakage of information. The paper analyzes firm-level attributes of successful name changers. The results show that market risk and historical profitability are significant predictors of sign of abnormal return on day of the event. Positive relation of firm profitability with high abnormal return on the day of announcement indicates that in India a firm cannot break with past, by means of a name change. The announcement of new name change does not have positive signaling effect. Hence, the managers of loss-making firms should avoid consuming resources for signaling through business name change.

The value relevance of intangibles: some evidence on industry sector, firm performance and size effects

This study, using a valuation model and a sample of UK firms for the period between 1998 and 2003, empirically investigates whether the market attaches different values to investments in goodwill (GW), research and development (RD) and advertising (AD) by firms in different sectors, of different sizes, and with different performances. The research findings indicate that the market attaches different values to investments in GW, RD and AD by firms in different sectors (manufacturing and non-manufacturing), of different sizes (large and small firms) and with different performances (profit-making and loss-making firms). Our results provide evidence that both RD and AD are valued almost equally for manufacturing and non-manufacturing and profit making and loss-making firms. While the market assigns more value to non-manufacturing and profit making firms' goodwill. Our results also suggest that goodwill, R&D, and advertising are likely to be more effective for larger firms. Overall, these results should also interest analysts and creditors seeking to evaluate firms' intangible investments, professionals engaged in designing disclosure strategies, and academics exploring issues related to intangibles.

The value relevance of intangibles: some evidence on industry sector, firm performance and size effects

This study, using a valuation model and a sample of UK firms for the period between 1998 and 2003, empirically investigates whether the market attaches different values to investments in goodwill (GW), research and development (RD) and advertising (AD) by firms in different sectors, of different sizes, and with different performances. The research findings indicate that the market attaches different values to investments in GW, RD and AD by firms in different sectors (manufacturing and non-manufacturing), of different sizes (large and small firms) and with different performances (profit-making and loss-making firms). Our results provide evidence that both RD and AD are valued almost equally for manufacturing and non-manufacturing and profit making and loss-making firms. While the market assigns more value to non-manufacturing and profit making firms' goodwill. Our results also suggest that goodwill, R&D, and advertising are likely to be more effective for larger firms. Overall, these results should also interest analysts and creditors seeking to evaluate firms' intangible investments, professionals engaged in designing disclosure strategies, and academics exploring issues related to intangibles.

Money for Nothing? Using Expectations of Loss Persistence to Examine Cash Compensation in Loss-Making Firms

We investigate how boards incorporate private information about managerial performance in compensation and turnover decisions. Building from the literature documenting that loss firms’ publicly available valuation allowance (VA) disclosures contain value-relevant private information, we show that the decision of whether or not to record a VA also captures contract-relevant private information. We develop an approach to extract a private, firm-specific, time-varying signal of managerial performance by inferring a more positive (negative) private signal when the VA decision suggests the firm expects the loss to be transitory (persistent). Our empirical analyses rely on a joint test of whether the VA decision reflects a private signal of managerial performance and whether the board uses this private information in contracting. Confirming our hypothesis, we document significantly larger discretionary compensation for transitory loss-firm CEOs, relative to persistent loss-firms. We also show that the VA decision informs the weighting of earnings in determining CEO compensation. Additionally, we provide evidence that the likelihood of CEO turnover is lower in transitory loss-firm years relative to persistent loss-firms. Overall, extracting private information from the VA decision provides an innovative way to extend our understanding of how boards use discretion in contracting.

Empirical estimation of the Residual Income Valuation Model: Profit-Making vs. Loss-Making firms

Empirical estimation of the Residual Income Valuation Model: Profit-Making vs. Loss-Making firms Walid Saleh Abstract This paper tests the empirical performance of different specifications of the residual income valuation model based upon the inflation-adjusted model of Gregory, Saleh, and Tucker (2005) that is consistent with the Walker's (1997, p 354) suggestion that historical cost accounting versions of the model be abandoned in favor of one based on deprival values. Overall, the paper concludes that the Ohlson (1995) specification appears to be the best model that explains stock prices relative to other specifications used in this paper. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jfbm.v5n2a2