Structural and market-related factors impacting profitability: A cross sectional study of listed companies

Abstract

The following paper aims at identifying whether several factors such as credit rating, liquidity, financial leverage, sales growth, company size, and average tax rates participate in determining the profitability of listed companies. This study adopted multiple regression analysis to measure the impact of the variables on profitability. The results have shown that the precedent variables explain 26.4% and 31.4% of ROA and ROE variations, respectively at a 5% significance level. Many researchers have deliberated about this subject; however, the uniqueness of this study is the assessment of credit ratings as a factor in explaining profitability of listed companies. Keywords: Profitability, Return on Assets, Return on Equity, Liquidity, Financial leverage, Credit ratings