The pharmaceutical sector is one of the most profitable industries in the world, despite the very high proportion of the required research and development costs that determine the activity itself and the high risks involved in investing in them. In addition to a number of industry-specific characteristics, the innovation policies of each country might also have a significant impact on the efficiency of pharmaceutical companies. The primary aim of the research was to demonstrate this effect in the case of the Visegrád countries. The ROE seemed to best reflect the ownership interests and the combined effect of other profitability ratios and it was confirmed by analysis of variance. The analysis was based on the EMIS corporate database; multivariate statistical methods were applied to demonstrate the reaching of indicator trends, and from among those methods regression analysis was applied in particular. Based on the findings, it was concluded that primarily the more profitable pharmaceutical companies were able to utilize their assets more efficiently, while manufacturers in the latter category financed their operations with external capital to a lower extent. Although the indicators of the analysed companies showed a very high standard deviation in all four countries, the results of the regression were only outstanding in Slovakia, which had a very low number of cases. In addition, temporal tendencies have been almost the same in the entire region, which was also influenced by the fact that return on capital of the business entities within the sector decreased by 2016 throughout the region. JEL classification:C12, C21, C25, C55.

No abstract

A nagyvállalatokhoz hasonlóan a kis- és középvállalkozói kör is igényli mindazokat az információkat, amelyek a vállalkozási tevékenység eredményességét és hatékonyságát tudják biztosítani az általuk hozott megalapozott vezetői döntésekkel. A nagyvállalatokhoz képest a kkv-k jelentős fejlődési potenciállal rendelkeznek, amelyet részben maguk a vállalkozások ki tudnak alakítani esetlegesen új-modern menedzsmenti – üzleti adminsztrációs módszerek bevezetésével, illetve gazdaságpolitikai intézkedések révén (=célzott és hatékony támogatási rendszerrel) lehetővé válhat számukra az a finanszírozási forrástömeg, amely a K+F+I folyamatok gerjesztésével szolgálja a versenyképesség növekedését és a hazai GDP-hez, exporthoz való nagyobb mértékű és arányú hozzájárulásukat. A tanulmányban bemutatásra kerülő elemzésben kitérünk a vizsgálati körbe bevont Észak-alföldi régióba tartozó kkv-k kvezetőinek controlling ismereteire, a controlling eszközök tudatos vagy éppen nem tudatos alkalmazására, az utódlás megítélésére, a vevői és beszállítói értékelésre és a vezetői számvitel egyes területeire. Összességében megállapítható a kis elemszámú minta alapján is, hogy a controlling eszközök használata arányos a vállalkozási mérettel, de ennek ellenére sok közepes méretű vállalkozás vezetője nem igényli a belső információk olyan mértékű gyűjtését és elemzését, amely kifejezetten tudná segíteni a döntéselőkészítés hatékonyságát, pl. a korszerű önköltségszámítási eljárások révén.

The significance of the pharmaceutical and commercial sectors in the national economy has noticeably intensified, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The main objective of this study was to gain a better insight into the main management characteristics of the actors in the sector. It was assumed that more efficient management of financial investments (acquisitions, loans) caused higher risk financial investment decisions in the pharmaceutical industry in order to place companies in a better position in view of equity investors, illustrated best as the profitability of equity (ROE). This paper examined one possible means of covering the extremely high indirect costs (R&D, marketing) of pharmaceutical companies, also justified by the restructuring of the industry and the effect of investments in long term financial instruments on the ROE of the same business entities. Built on the EMIS database, the analysis only used the indicators of those companies operating in the pharmaceutical industry in Visegrad countries for 2019. The authors sought to draw conclusions about possible management characteristics of the entire pharmaceutical sector of these countries using cluster analysis and linear regression. The initial assumption, or main hypothesis of the study, was that in one of the countries studied or for those businesses operating above a certain revenue category, the impact of a company’s risk-taking (which can also be expressed in terms of asset-based financial income) on profitability, may appear or intensify. The performed studies did not show a strong correlation between the explanatory and profit variables either at the national level or at the level of groups formed by regional market position. In other words, the extremely high level of indirect costs were mostly covered by sales of successful cash products, and companies not indebted to suppliers undertook significant risks in the field of financial investments, thereby offsetting the positive impact of the latter on earnings.

The specificities of pharmaceutical companies’ activities also have an impact on their ability to improve profitability compared to other sectors. Examples of such specificities include patent rights on the medicines produced, which for a longer period of time prevent the entry of competing players, allowing sunk costs to be offset to some extent by advantages from using higher margins. The primary purpose of this study is to examine whether the bargaining power of R&D-engaged companies significantly affects the financial margin of their operations to a different extent than other pharmaceutical companies. This study examined panel data focused on companies with the highest turnover, while we filtered out differences in the effect due to different macroeconomic and development environments. Our findings are that while the gross profit was significantly influenced by the type of activity within the industry, this statement for the cash cycle is no longer justified. Our conclusion was that the difference between the engaged and non-engaged in R&D companies expressed mostly in the profitability ratios, besides that, countries which had different development policies and accounting systems also took impact on financial margins, although the relative GDP advantages disappeared when looking at intra-industry, cross-country movements.