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aspects of the performance of chemical companies are most rewarded by the capital market

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tom lee
aspects of the performance of chemical companies are most rewarded by the capital market

To understand this wealth reversal, we analyze the drivers of value creation to determine what investors want most. Our research uses statistical methods to analyze the financial data of about 450 chemical companies in the world over the past 20 years.

Corporate financial theory predicts that higher ROIC and faster growth will drive shareholders to obtain higher total return (TRS). The chemical industry is no exception. To the surprise of many observers, no equally important factor has been shown. After considering the differences between ROIC and growth, we find that many factors that are generally considered to be important to investors, such as the company's professional and commodity profile and the geographical area of its activities, do not significantly affect shareholder value. Therefore, chemical leaders should focus on how these factors drive ROIC and growth, not as an end in themselves.

Most observers of the industry know that the rising trend of its ROIC contributed to its strong capital market performance at the beginning of this century. Our multiple regression model of ROIC and TRS shows that, within the time frame of our study, a company with a 1% advantage in ROIC has the same advantage in TRS, while the company with similar performance in other aspects has a 1% advantage in ROIC.

As long as the difference persists, the effect has a compounding effect every year: a company that outperforms another company in ROIC performance by one percentage point has a higher TRS performance. While the difference may seem small, compounding means that the first company will return nearly 20% more in a decade (compared with 7% and 6% a year). The same model shows that if one chemical company's growth rate is one percentage point higher than another, its TRS will be about 0.2% higher. Similarly, companies with higher growth rates will expand the difference in TRS performance every year.

This analysis shows that improving the ROIC of chemical companies has a greater impact on their value than faster revenue growth. The reason is that the average ROIC of the industry is relatively low, about 9%, while the weighted cost of capital is as high as single digits. With such a low cost of capital spread, the impact of higher ROIC on value is greater than the growth of low return, both in theory and in our data set. In fact, investors differentiate between the value of growth at high and low ROIC levels. As predicted by theory, with ROIC around 20%, investors in chemical companies realized that growth creates value and began to expect stronger performance to bring higher growth rate. At such a high ROIC level, the annual TRS will increase by 0.6% for every 1% increase in economic growth. In contrast, higher roics no longer significantly increase value.

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