No abstract

Companies operating in the energy sector are under pressure to boost the level of green energy production. The use of renewable energy sources will have a positive impact on the environment, but the basic question is whether power plants that produce electricity using renewable energy sources are in better financial condition than those that use only traditional energy sources. We address the latter using a new hybrid approach that extends prior research by combining three analyses: ratio analysis with a large set of indicators, the Altman model and cluster analysis. To test the statistical significance of differences between groups, Student’s t-test is applied. The sample concerns companies from the Baltic States and Central Europe in the years 2008–2017. The results indicate that in most cases there is no statistical difference in the financial standing of companies that use renewable energy sources and those that generate only fossil fuel-based energy.

Research background: From the perspective of managers and shareholders, obtaining profit is the main goal and driver of company activity. A profitable company can find investors easily, because they count on a big return on investment. However, enterprises that are not effective enough could end up being taken over by others, go bankrupt or shut down business.Purpose of the article: is to identify the impact of a high share of equity in the total assets on the profitability of manufacturing companies.Methods: The focus of this paper is on the manufacturing sector. Research time-scale is set to sixteen years (2000–2015). The choice of this period is determined by data availability. In the examined interval of time over 15 thousand firms from the sector in question were flirted drawn from the EMIS. The gathered data enabled computation of the following financial indicators for the itemized companies: gross margin, operating margin, return on sales, return on assets, and return on equity. Then selection of companies was carried out to choose these with a high share of equity in its total assets. The proportion was regarded to be high if it reaches fifty one percent. Companies with quantities below this threshold have been excluded from the sample. The next step defines intervals (classes) for the equity ratio. Depending on the value of equity, the remaining firms were assigned to their corresponding class. In order to analyze influence of the quantity of equity on the level of profitability t-Student test for independent samples has been applied.Findings & Value added: The comparative analysis of the indicator of the size of equity with the indicators of profitability makes it possible to confirm that there is a significant impact on the value of profitability ratios of manufacturing companies. However, in most cases the impact is statistically irrelevant.