Value relevance and impact of sustainability measures and expansion plans in the coal industry
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Date
2021
Department
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Mcode
Degree programme
Finance
Language
en
Pages
61+4
Series
Abstract
Corporate sustainability practices have been increasingly important for companies to address during the last years. Simultaneously, in the academic world, researchers have had an increased interest in the relation between corporate sustainability performance and company value. Even though the findings have been mixed, the general hypothesis is that investors view sustainability performance as a value enhancing matter. This study focuses on the coal industry, which is widely acknowledged as the worst industry when it comes to the acceleration of climate change. The aim of this study is to examine the value relevance and impact of sustainability measures and coal production related expansion plans in the coal sector. Ohlson’s valuation framework is used to examine the relation between sustainability measures and expansion plans with price-to-book ratio and Tobin’s Q as the dependent variables. The findings of this research show that environmental efforts are not valued enough in the markets. Investors do not reward companies for performing better environmentally, thus, leading to a situation where the companies do not have enough incentives to perform better as measured with ESG score. This is seen through the fact that the ESG score, and especially the environmental pillar is negatively associated with the dependent variables. Nevertheless, a clear indication of the changing attitude of investor’s is that they penalize the company’s future coal-related expansion plans. This is seen through the other main finding of this research – coal expansion plans and the dependent variables display a significant negative relation, meaning that investors are already showing signs of phasing out of coal.Description
Thesis advisor
Kaustia, MarkkuKeywords
ESG, coal, environmental performance, Tobin's Q, climate change, firm value, sustainability, price-to-book ratio