Financial and Non-financial Drivers of High-tech Companies’ Value

This Master's thesis is devoted to identifying the financial and non-financial drivers for the market value of high-tech companies. The study was performed on the basis of multi-country data of 65 publicly traded high-tech companies from 2015 to 2019. An empirical study was conducted using the panel data analysis model with fixed effects, which led to conclusions about the dual nature of the drivers impact on the value of high-tech companies: financial and non-financial. The dependent variable is represented by market value to book value ratio. Among the tested financial drivers, the statistical significance was detected in the return on investment ratio and revenue. Through this study the investments in R&D have been confirmed to be positive and statistically highly significant (1%). At the same time, it was shown that non-financial drivers represented by different ratings, which were proxy variables for the elements of intellectual capital, are not statistically significant. Also, we came to the conclusion that high-tech companies are not active payers of dividends, since most of their goals are to invest in business expansion and new R&D projects, hence the dividends per share ratio was insignificant. Thus, only two financial drivers and one non-financial were found to be of an impact on market value of the company. The main limitations of this study are the sample size and the selected dependent variable representing the market value of the company. As it was data-proved is this thesis the large differences exist between company market and book value, so a part of this can be explained by intellectual capital. For further research in this field, it seems to be necessary to expand the pool of non-financial drivers in order to find the optimal proxy variables for elements of intellectual capital.