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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of working capital management (WCM) on profitability under different financial conditions (constraint/unconstraint) and WCM policy (aggressive/conservative). Furthermore, the study investigates the existence of optimal working capital levels under different financial conditions and WCM policy.

Two-step system generalized method of moments and fixed effect models are used to analyze the data collected from Prowess database from 2011 to 2020 for a sample of 1,104 Indian manufacturing companies.

The study finds an inverted U-shaped relationship between working capital and profitability in all financial conditions and working capital policy. This finding advocates the existence of an optimal level of working capital that equates the costs and benefits of holding working capital to maximize the companies’ profitability. However, holding working capital beyond the optimal level negatively affects profitability. Companies under financial constraints with aggressive working capital policies have the lowest optimal cash conversion cycle (CCC). Furthermore, the relationship of working capital with profitability and the optimal CCC varies owing to firm age and industry group.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that incorporates the impact of working capital on firm’s performance from both financial constraint (unconstraint) and aggressive (conservative) working capital policy perspectives in the Indian context. Furthermore, this study also contributes in terms of reflecting the effect of firm age and industry in determining the optimum CCC of the firms.

This study is an exploratory study investigating firm-specific internal factors that influence the profitability performance of selected life insurance firms in eight Asian countries (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia) from 2008-2014. This paper aims to focus on internal rather than external factors based on the resource-based view suggesting that the internal resources of a firm are key to gaining competitive advantage.

The authors used panel data estimation model to test our six hypotheses on these eight selected countries for the period between 2008 and 2014.

A random effect model reveals that size, volume of capital and underwriting risk are significantly related to the profitability of Asian life insurance firm, measured as return on assets. Premium growth, asset tangibility and liquidity are insignificant predictors of the profitability performance of these life insurance firms.

Three implications of this study are that life insurance firms need to proactively tap new business opportunities by attracting younger generation customers via e-marketing technologies; secure larger capital base to finance their market expansion strategies; and focus on intangible resources such as goodwill, brand equity and reputation.

This study contributes to the literature by conducting an exploratory regional-based panel study of Asian life insurance firms to find common factors that contribute towards profitability. The study is conducted on a collective sample of Asian life insurance firms based on the premise that the firms included in the sample engage in cross-border activities and share the same international financial reporting standards. These commonalities allow us to treat the firms jointly in a somewhat similar Asian macroeconomic environment.

Insurance companies play a significant role in every economy; hence, it is essential to investigate and understand the factors that propel their profitability. Unlike previous studies that present a linear relationship, this study provides initial evidence by exploring the non-linear impacts of the determinants of profitability amongst life insurers in South Africa.

The study uses a panel dataset of 62 life insurers in South Africa, covering 2013–2019. The generalised method of moments and the dynamic panel threshold estimation technique were used to estimate the relationship.

The empirical results from the direct relationship reveal that investment income and solvency significantly predict life insurance companies' profitability. On the other hand, underwriting risk, reinsurance and size reduce profitability. Further, the dynamic panel threshold analysis confirms non-linearities in the relationships. The results show that insurance size, investment income and solvency promote profitability beyond a threshold level, implying a propelling effect on life insurers' profitability at higher levels. Below the threshold, these factors have an adverse effect. The study further points to underwriting risk, reinsurance and leverage having a reduced effect on life insurers' profitability when they fall above the threshold level.

The findings suggest that insurers interested in boosting their profit position must commit more resources to maintain their solvency and manage their assets and returns on investment. The study further recommends that effective control of underwriting risk is critical to the profitability of the life insurance industry.

The study contributes to the literature by providing first-time evidence on the determinants of life insurance companies' profitability by way of exploring threshold effects in South Africa.

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that influence capital structure, profitability and stock returns and the relationship between capital structure, profitability and stock returns. The endogenous variables in this study are capital structure, profitability and stock returns, whereas the exogenous variables are firm size, growth opportunity, tangibility, liquidity, volatility and uniqueness.

The population used is a company that is listed on the compass index 100 period of August 2016. A total of 64 companies are sampled in this study. The unit of analysis is 448 data. The data analysis technique used is path analysis with the help of AMOS.

The results obtained show only profitability variables that affect stock returns. Variable capital structure, firm size, growth opportunity, tangibility and liquidity have no significant effect. Variables that influence capital structure are only influenced by growth opportunity, whereas other variables are not significant and variables that affect profitability are firm size, growth opportunity, uniqueness and volatility.

Path analysis is a model similar to the multiple regression analysis, factor analysis, canonical correlation analysis, discriminant analysis and more general multivariate analysis groups. This research discusses that capital structure is useful for increasing the value of the company in the sense that the more debt that is used, a tax deduction will be obtained because of interest costs. So that the company’s profits will increase and eventually will increase the value of the company. This opinion remains a controversy among financial experts. Until now, there is no agreement that can explain the capital structure in all conditions of the company. There are two important theories concerning capital structure, trade-off theory and pecking order theory.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors affecting profitability of pharmaceutical company in Indonesia. While research and development has been the main discussed issues in pharmaceutical sector development, scant attention has been paid to profitability factors determined by financial ratio specifically. The industry itself faces significant disruption with the implementation of universal health coverage in Indonesia. This study investigates the factors affecting profitability in an Indonesian pharmaceutical company after the national health insurance policy implementation.

This research is based on five independent variables (IVs) with six measurements that were empirically examined for their relationship with profitability. These variables are firm size (as measured by total sales), company efficiency (assets turnover), liquidity (current ratio), market power (the Lerner index) and a firm's growth (as measured by sales growth and sustainable growth rate). Data of ten pharmaceutical companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange covering the period of 2014–2018 were extracted from companies' annual reports. Pooled ordinary least squares regression and fixed effects were used to analyze the data.

The findings show strong and positive relationships between liquidity and sustainable growth rate with profitability as measured by return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROA) and earning per share (EPS), except EPS for liquidity. Further, both firm size and market power show positive significant relationships with ROA but negative significant relationships with EPS. Sales growth and company efficiency (as measured by assets turnover ratio) have no significant relationship with profitability.

Due to data availability, the data include only listed pharmaceutical companies in the Indonesia Stock Exchange.

These results benefit internal users (such as managers, shareholders and employees). They can realize the determinants of enhancing the profitability of their company after the implementation of universal health coverage from the Indonesian government (JKN – Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional) since 2014. On the other side, other external users (such as investors, creditors, newly established pharmaceutical companies and tax authorities) also may get advantages of these results. It is clear that a significant impact happened upon this new policy implementation, and how an Indonesian pharmaceutical company will be profitable in the future. The relevance of company's business strategy (product and customer portfolio, competitor intelligence, etc.) with the profitability factors from this study can be further scrutinized as further consideration for both internal and external users.

This study differs from previous studies in many ways; first, it focuses on pharmaceutical companies in Indonesia. Previous studies have concentrated on different countries and companies in other sectors, such as services, banking and financial institutions or on industrial organizations. Second, this study analyzes the data from pharmaceutical companies' annual reports since 2014. There was a significant event of universal health coverage (national health insurance) implementation from the Indonesian government. Third, the study used ROE, ROA and EPS as indicators of profitability. Last but not least, the results of the study provide empirical evidence that firms with significant market power, good liquidity and well-managed sustainable growth rate improve operating income and ultimately enhance profitability.

Capital structure decisions are important decisions for any business activity because they have considerable influence on the worth and cost of companies. Most previous studies in Ethiopia were primarily focused on identifying and measuring problems in banking sectors and other sectors and paying little attention to the construction sector. The purpose of this study is mainly to fill the gap by examining the effects of capital structure on the profitability of construction firms in Ethiopia.

To test hypotheses of the study, time series secondary data were gathered from the sample of 30 grade one construction companies in Ethiopia during the 2011–2015 period. To examine the correlation among capital structures and its determinants, random effect multiple regression models were used.

From the regression outcomes, the study indicates that capital structure measured by debt to equity and long-term debt to total assets has a significant positive correlation with return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA) of sampled construction companies. However, the capital structure measured by debt to assets has a significant negative correlation with ROE and ROA of sampled construction companies in Ethiopia.

This paper is the author’s original work and assures that the paper was not undertaken anywhere and is also not published in any journal before.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reciprocal relationship between profitability and capital structure and its impacts on the corporate values of manufacturing companies in Indonesia.

This research is a quantitative research using the general structural component analysis as the analysis tool. This research involved a number of manufacturing companies registered in the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2008‒2015 period.

Profitability has a negative significant influence on capital structure, indicating that profitability is a determining factor upon the corporate capital structure. This finding also implies that the improvement in profitability in the forms of return on investment, return on equity and net profit margin triggers decrease in the proportion of debt within the capital structures of manufacturing companies registered in BEI or Indonesia Stock Exchange.

Previous research only addressed the one-way correlation between profitability and capital structure, whereas this research measured the two-way correlation and reciprocal relationship at the same time. This research measured the influences of profitability and capital structure on the corporate value, in order to find a consistent finding that has not been yet obtained in previous research. This research also attempted to find out whether the use of the same variables within different time and setting (in Indonesia) leads to different results. The inconsistent findings also motivate the researcher to re-explore the reciprocal influence of corporate profitability on corporate capital structure and its effect toward the corporate value.

This study is conducted to determine the factors that affect profitability in Chinese listed companies (by using financial ratios). Four independent variables liquidity, intangible assets, working capital and company leverage were empirically tested for their relationships with profitability besides two control variables which are firm size and company efficiency.

This study used secondary data extracted manually from the annual reports of non-financial Chinese listed companies on the Shanghai stock exchange (http://www.szse.cn/); the data set covers 100 companies during the period of 2017–2019, and a random selection method was used in order to achieve credibility and fairness as much as possible.

The findings show firm size, working capital and intangible assets have positive and significant relationships with profitability [return on assets (ROA) and earnings per share (EPS)]. Positive working capital is important to lower the cost of capital and improve companies' profitability. Intangible assets are also an essential source to improve profitability due to their low costs. In addition, the findings display a negative and strong relationship between liquidity and profitability, meaning that companies suffer low profit due to inefficient use of liquid items. Interestingly, leverage, which is measured by debt ratio and leverage ratio, shows mixed results; debt ratio shows a positive and strong association with ROA but not with EPS; while leverage ratio displays a strong but negative association with ROA but not with EPS. These results confirm the inverted U-shape relationship between leverage and profitability, which depends on the balance between benefit and cost of debt.

Profitability is also important for employees and society where business organization provides sustainability and stability for both of them. Employees can then significantly contribute to achieve higher firm's profitability by efficiently using firm's resources.

This study differs than previous studies in number of aspects: First, this study focuses on financial ratios to explain profitability in Chinese companies. This study provides empirical results about the factors connected to profitability and help stakeholders to make their right decisions. Second, it examines the impact of four independent factors and two control variables that some of them are new in Chinese context such as intangible assets. Third previous studies focus on financial industry such as banks; however, this study focuses on non-financial industry.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the joint influence of two factors (companies’ performance and growth) on the company’s capital structure and to determine the conditions for financially sustainable competitive strategies in the coordinates profitability and growth.

The study sample includes 1,996 companies from 6 high-tech industries in Russia (panel data: 7,984 observations). The authors use regression models with random effects and carry out a three-dimensional visualization of the resulting dependencies.

The study found that profitability improves the capital structure (reduces the share of borrowed capital) and, on the contrary, the growth of companies (assets growth or sales growth) increases the leverage ratio. In the case of assets growth, the combined influence of two factors reduces the negative effect of assets growth. The results have shown that the outstripping growth of most high-tech companies requires an increase in debt capital and deterioration in the capital structure and financial stability.

In general, based on the results of this study, the authors have identified groups of fast-growing companies that need financial support, and have defined the main areas of impact (reducing the loan burden and increasing profitability) that will allow these companies to maintain high growth rates and demonstrate advanced development.

The relationships (which the authors identified between the control variables, the studied variables and leverage) were obtained for the first time for a sample of companies in high-tech industries and services in bigger transition country (Russia).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors affecting profitability in Malaysian-listed companies. It has been argued that profitability is the main pillar for any company to survive in the long run. Although profitability is the primary goal of all business ventures, scant attention has been paid to the factors that affect profitability in developing countries. This study investigates the factors affecting profitability in Malaysian-listed companies.

This research is based on five independent variables that were empirically examined for their relationship with profitability. These variables are: firm size (as measured by total sales), working capital (WC), company efficiency (assets turnover ratio), liquidity (current ratio) and leverage (debt equity ratio and leverage ratio). Data of 120 companies listed on Bursa Malaysia covering the period from 2012 to 2014 were extracted from companies’ annual reports. Pooled ordinary least squares regression and fixed-effects were used to analyze the data.

The findings show a strong positive relationship between firm size (total sales), WC, company efficiency (assets turnover ratio) and profitability. The results also show a negative relationship between both debt equity ratio and leverage ratio and profitability. Liquidity (current ratio) has no significant relationship with profitability.

Due to the time limitation, the data includes only 120 companies listed in bursa Malaysia and covers the period from 2012 to 2014.

These results benefit internal users (such as mangers, shareholders and employees). They can realize the determinants of enhancing the profitability of their company after the depreciation of the Malaysian currency and therefore concentrate more on the factors that enhance their companies’ profitability. On the other side, other external users (such as investors, creditors, new established companies, tax authority) also may get advantages of these results. It is clear that those users concern about the profitability of companies and the determinants of their profitability after the currency’s depreciation.

This study differs than previous studies in many ways: first, it focuses on non-financial listed companies in Malaysia. Previous studies have concentrated on companies in the financial sector, such as banking and financial institutions or on industrial organizations. Second, this study analyzes the data in companies’ annual reports for a three-year period from 2012 to 2014. During this period, the economy in Malaysia was fluctuating due to currency depreciation. Third, the study used both return on equity and earnings per share as indicators of profitability. Fourth, the results of the study provide empirical evidence that large size firms with efficiently managed assets can improve operating income and ultimately enhance profitability. Last but not least, this study applies the resource-based theory and the trade-off theory.