Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirement for the MSc in Finance FINANCE DISSERTATION ON Capital structure and corporate financial performance: Evidence from Southeast Asian construction firms DAO LE QUAN ID No: 21071796 Intake 5 Supervisor: Dr Chu Khanh Lan September 2022 17014125810681000000 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 2 1. Significance of research 5 1. Contribution of the research 9 1. New findings of research 9 Chapter 2: Literature review 10 2.
Capital structure theories 10 2. The trade-off theory 12 2. Pecking order theory 13 2. The agency theory 14 2.
The market timing theory 16 2. Corporate financial performance 18 2. Factors affecting Corporate financial performance 20 2. Leverage and Corporate financial performance 22 2.
Previous studies in South East - Asia 23 2. Proposed model 25 Chapter 3: Methodology 26 3. Data collection method 29 3. Variables 30 Chapter 4: Analysis and results 31 4.
Impact on ROA 31 4. Impact on ROE 32 1 4. Research some specific countries 33 4. Viet Nam 38 Chapter 5: Conclusions and recommendations 40 5.
Recommendations 43 REFERENCES 45 Appendix 1: Descriptive statistic 51 2 Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Background knowledge This study was built and developed with the main objective to evaluate the relationship between capital structure and corporate financial performance of enterprises operating in Southeast Asia. For the operation of many businesses, the use of financial leverage is an indispensable issue to ensure the operation process. In recent years, Southeast Asian countries have increased their economic integration; increased multilateral and bilateral cooperation processes in the region (Kwok & Koh, 2017). To achieve growth, businesses need many resources, including financial resources when mobilizing more from loans or increasing calls for investment capital from shareholders and investors.
However, increasing the use of financial leverage or calling for more investment capital can bring many risks to the business. Therefore, this study evaluates the influence of capital structure on corporate financial performance of enterprises in Southeast Asia. Capital structure is the ratio between debt and equity in the capital source of the business to finance production and business activities (Anuar & Chin, 2016). A company's capital structure is the combination of debt and equity used to finance its operations.
In this sense, capital structure is the ratio between debt and equity; capital to finance business activities.; if the enterprise is considered as an asset for investment, the value of the enterprise is the benefit to investors at the present time as well as in the future. Currently, there are many methods with different viewpoints to determine the value of enterprises such as: from the absolute valuation point of view, there is the discounted cash flow method or the asset method. Capital structure is an important issue for any business, no matter how large or small. A company's capital finance structures the growth and formation of capital that a company can use to purchase assets and do business.
According to the equity relationship criterion, the capital structure component of a company usually consists of equity and debt capital. Equity is the amount of capital owned by the business owner; can be one or more people. This is a very important source of capital for an enterprise, not only limited to the legal issue of establishing a business, but also demonstrating the financial autonomy of a company (Ajanthan, 2013). Equity usually consists of own capital and retained earnings.
For many businesses, the owner's equity is often not an abundant resource. Therefore, many businesses often borrow money to operate, leading to an increase in liabilities. On the other hand, raising more capital to raise equity from investors for many businesses is not always easy (Weill, 3 2008). The capital structure of an enterprise includes the structure of internal and external funding sources that the enterprise uses in the course of its operations.
In general, the resource-based view of financial capital assumes that if a business is constrained by financial resources; then the balance of use of these resources has a great influence on output efficiency as well as financial efficiency to ensure business continuity. Operating businesses are often limited in their ability to raise capital or use scale. When a company increases its financial leverage; the company needs to develop a full scenario to pay its payables on time and if these obligations are not met, creditors can ask the company to go bankrupt. Therefore, a factor considered that affects the development ability of the enterprise is the level of financial leverage; as well as the choice of debt structure or equity structure in the business capital structure.
When considering the cost of financial distress from using debt, the trade-off theory also suggests that many potentially financially distressed firms will use less debt in their capital structure. to avoid the risks and benefits of using debt makes sense only when the company has to meet its tax obligations. In the case of companies, the tax benefits of increased business efficiency are not the main consideration. The positive impact of capital structure on a business is the financial flexibility to realize business opportunities as well as the certainty that there is less risk in the business owner's business.
as suggested by this theory. Many researchers construct optimal capital structures and prove the existence of this model through actual control processes. The optimal capital structure is considered the efficient capital structure; minimize the cost of operating capital and mobilize the resources of the enterprise, while maximizing the value of effective use. Therefore, optimal capital structure decisions have a strong impact on the success of a business (Zafar, Zeeshan and Ahmed, 2016).
However, the huge challenge of building an optimal capital structure is not an easy task; when the capital structure of the business often changes over time due to changes in cash flow or business strategy. Exactly how companies choose the amount of debt and equity in their capital structure is a mystery. Is the business mainly influenced by the traditional capital structure in their industry or are there other reasons behind their actions? The answers to these questions are important, because the actions managers take will affect the company's performance, as well as how investors perceive the company. Many research models on capital structure have been carried out to find out how to support enterprises to operate effectively.
In particular, Vietnam's economy has many small and medium enterprises; even for many large enterprises, the main concern of business leaders is 4 to make a profit; or focus on effective business. However, the profit goal is not always the top priority of the business (Almajali and Shamsuddin, 2020). Especially for many large-scale enterprises, the operating structure is complicated with many different activities and many affiliated enterprises. Therefore, determining an optimal capital structure model is an important issue.
In addition, an efficient capital structure often brings great competitive power to the business. The Covid-19 pandemic has not only caused many impacts on human health and the social security situation of many countries around the world, but also left many heavy consequences for the world economy. In practice, however, this outbreak can be viewed as a health check event for business enterprises (Zafar, Zeeshan and Ahmed, 2016). The volatility of macroeconomic indicators such as exchange rate, inflation, consumption output and other inputs.
This study was conducted to evaluate and analyze the impact of capital structure on the financial performance of construction companies listed on centralized stock exchanges in Southeast Asia; in which, this study selects countries including: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Significance of research Many models have been built to measure and predict factors affecting corporate financial performance. Includes micro and macro factors. There are also many studies evaluating the role and impact of capital structure on financial performance with many different factors.
Like Pecking Order, the MM theory or Trade-off theory has demonstrated the influence of Capital structure on the successful performance of the business. Many experts assert that increasing financial leverage also increases the value of the business, but also exposes the business to more financial risk. From theoretical as well as empirical studies, this paper will provide empirical evidence that capital structure has an impact on firm value in Southeast Asia as a whole. This study aims to examine the impact of capital structure and financial performance of active construction firms in Southeast Asia.
The selected companies are all listed with the database from 2015 to 2021. In a market economy, in addition to the goal of profit maximization, business managers also aim to maximize profits. business value maximization (or owner value maximization). However, there are many factors that affect the value of a business, in which capital structure is an important factor with a large impact.
In this article, the author uses a linear regression model to determine the trend of impact of capital structure on financial performance of enterprises; and at the same time determine the optimal capital structure of enterprises operating in Southeast Asia. Research objective Many studies have shown a close relationship between the construction of an effective capital structure and the financial performance of the business. A business that can raise cheap financing often has an advantage in operating costs, which in turn promotes better profit margins. The effect of a company's capital structure on performance is well-documented.
A company with weak debt ratios and lack of financial flexibility may be sensitive to economic shocks. Especially in the case that the company falls into the situation of using excessive financial leverage, it is also very difficult to borrow more money to cover costs. The effect of capital structure on the business performance of companies is explained on the basis of the performance-based capital structure theory. According to the traditional view of capital structure, firms using debt are more profitable than firms dependent on equity, since the cost of equity is considered to be higher than the cost of equity.
This is true in practice when using the return on equity (ROE) performance scale. However, the financial risk and cost of capital also increase with heavy use of debt. Therefore, the optimal capital structure is proposed from this point of view with the goal of minimizing WACC and maximizing the value of the firm. This study then provides specific estimates of the optimal capital structure for firms in each country studied.
From there, evaluate and consider whether there is a difference between the capital structure in each country. Research subjects The research object built and developed in this study is the listed construction companies on stock exchanges in different countries in Southeast Asia. The information collection period spans from 2018 to 2021. All research companies obtained information from their annual reports and audited financial statements.
Factors to be considered include specialized financial accounting information and financial ratios; to serve the calculation of the research model. In addition, the research subjects were omitted financial institutions; such as commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies or finance companies due to their more specialized capital structure features than the rest of the market. Research scope Therefore, the main research object analyzed and evaluated is the capital structure of the enterprise and financial performance of construction companies. In particular, the research sample includes construction companies listed on the stock exchanges of 9 countries in Southeast Asia.
Basically, these stock markets are all major stock markets in the region and have a relatively long history of development compared to other countries. No finance 6 company; such as banks, insurance companies and finance companies, are included in this analysis because the capital structure and business characteristics of these institutions are relatively different from the study population as a whole. In addition, the construction companies that collected the information were all companies that ensured business continuity during the study period; i. weeding out the companies that went bankrupt or closed on the centralized stock exchange.
As well as removing companies that have been delisted or converted from public companies to private companies.