Debt financing & firm performance: A study of manufacturing companies on Ho Chi Minh stock exchange
Abstract
This paper investigates impact of debt on firm performance, using panel data
collected from audited financial statement of 88 manufacturing companies listed on Ho
Chi Minh Stock Exchange for a five-year period, 2010 – 2014. Return on assets is used as
proxy for firm performance, while short-term debt to total assets, long-term debt to total
assets and accounts payable to total assets represents for three measures of debt level;
size and age are also included as control variables in order to test the relationship
between firm performance and debt financing. The empirical study shows that short-term
debt and long-term debt are found to have statistically significant and negative relation to
return on assets, whereas accounts payable shows an negative yet insignificant impact.
The study also indicates that in addition to the factors of firm debts, size and age of firms
are also significantly related to firms performance.