Svenska Revisionsakademins pris till Jan-Erik Gröjers minne för bästa uppsats framlagd under 2022 vid svenskt universitet eller högskola på avancerad nivå har tilldelats Viggo Batsigkeit Ericstam & Edvard Hagman. Priset gäller för uppsatsen ” The Valuation of Organization Capital Across Profit and Loss Firms” framlagd vid Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, handledd av Henrik Andersson.
Juryns motivering
Intangible assets have over time gained an increased importance in firm’s book values due to higher investments. The authors of this thesis demonstrate that the organization capital has incremental, yet modest, explanatory power to that of knowledge capital for equity market values of loss firms, and that organization capital is valued differently across profit and loss firms, but similarly across qualitatively different loss firms. Suggesting that investors can assess differences in organization capital between profit firms and loss firms but fail to do so between qualitatively different loss firms.
The authors find that the unrecorded stock of organization capital is valued more positively for profit firms than for loss firms and argue that this is because profit firms, by virtue of reporting a profit, are perceived as making more productive use of their stock of organization capital among investors.
The authors perform a study which has a comparative side between profit firms and loss firms and explores the determinants of intangible assets in equity market valuation by looking at historical data, while adding qualitative explanatories. The authors keep a nuanced discussion illustrating multiple perspectives on the topic throughout the thesis.
The thesis is touching upon a relevant subject for understanding organizational capital’s effect on stock market valuation and the value determinants of intangible assets. This is valuable information for investors as it describes the behavior and tendencies in stock market valuation of profit respectively loss firms but is also valuable for management to understand the value and dynamics of organizational capital. Given the results, the authors suggest that investors are not able to use financial accounting information for assessing the organization capital across different loss firms, or that they are irrational and do not value the organization capital of these loss firms differently. The former suggestions can form hypothesizes for future research which can further enhance the understanding of the behavior of investors and what value determinants are important for particularly loss firms.
The authors are worthy winners of the Swedish Audit Academy’s thesis scholarship in memory of Jan-Erik Gröjer for best essay 2022.