This study examines how financial health affects matching between revenues and expenses in the current and next periods and whether investment efficiency moderates the relation between financial health and matching. When a firm is financially unhealth...
This study examines how financial health affects matching between revenues and expenses in the current and next periods and whether investment efficiency moderates the relation between financial health and matching. When a firm is financially unhealthy, it generally fails to generate sufficient revenues for corresponding expenses. Then it has an incentive for increasing current-period earnings by delaying expenses into the future. Thus, I expect that the matching between current-period revenues and current-period (next-period) expenses is weaker (stronger) for financially unhealthy firms than for financially healthy firms.
However, if a firm invests efficiently into profitable projects using external financed cash that worsens its financial health, it is likely that the effect of financial health on the matching is different. Accordingly, I expect that the matching between current-period revenues and current-period (next-period) expenses is stronger (weaker) for financially unhealthy and efficiently investing firms than for financially unhealthy and inefficiently investing firms.
To test the hypotheses, I employ Dichev and Tang (2008) model that analyze the relation between current-period revenues and previous-period, current-period, and next-period expenses. I use debt-asset ratios as a proxy for financial health. If a firm-year is in the highest decile of debt-asset ratios, financial health dummy is 1 and 0 otherwise. And following McNichols and Stubben (2008), investment efficiency is measured as the absolute value of residual from a regression model where capital expenditures are regressed on previous-period Tobin’s Q, cash flows, asset growth, and previous-period capital expenditures. If a firm-year is in the highest quintile of the absolute value of residual, investment efficiency dummy is 1 and 0 otherwise. The final sample consists of 6,033 non-banking firm-years with December fiscal year, listed on the Korea Exchange from1994 to 2014.
Empirical findings generally support my expectation. First, the matching between current-period revenues and current-period expenses incrementally deteriorates for financial unhealthy firms than for financial healthy firms. At the same time, current-period revenues are more positively associated with next-period expenses for financial unhealthy firms than for financial healthy firms. This suggests that managers of financially unhealthy firms tend to delay current-period expenses into the future. Second, the poor matching between current-period revenues and current-period expenses is attenuated for financially unhealthy and investment-efficient firms than for financially unhealthy and investment-inefficient firms. This indicates that the delayed recognition of current-period expenses into the future is weakened when the firm invests efficiently into profitable projects that enhance future profitability.
Overall, the results in this study indicate that firm characteristics such as financial health and investment efficiency have a significant effect on the revenue-expense matching. Further, this study suggests stakeholders need to be careful when evaluating firms with poor financial health, given that financially unhealthy firms with high investment efficiency enhance the contemporaneous correlation between revenues and expenses.