Value Reporting and Firm Performance

Abstract

Proponents of the concept of "value reporting" emphasize the idea that it may be in firms’ interest to provide investors and other stakeholders with a holistic picture of their value generation activities. The basic idea is that by explaining more clearly how and why value is created in the company, especially by considering the interplay of financial and non-financial value drivers, management will enhance its own understanding of the value generation process. This, in turn, enables management to make better operating decisions in the future. Using a 10-year panel of Swiss firms, we document that firms with better value reporting quality deliver better future operating performance and obtain greater economic value added. They also exhibit higher valuation ratios. These results hold when controlling for industry-year fixed effects as well as with two instrumental variables approaches. These findings also shed light on the potential value generation benefits of "integrated reporting".