The value relevance of accounting‐based performance measures in emerging economies

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the relative and incremental value‐relevance of a comprehensive set of accounting‐based measures of firm's performance in the emerging capital market of Egypt. Design/methodology/approach - The regression models are estimated using OLS to investigate the relative and incremental value relevance of accounting‐based performance measures. The relative value relevance tests are used to examine which performance measures better explain stock returns. The study also uses the incremental value relevance tests to examine whether one of these measures provides value‐relevance data beyond that provided by another. Findings - The results of the empirical tests indicate that relative and incremental value relevance tend to increase when moving down in the income statement, with net income having the largest relative and incremental value relevance while total sales have the lowest relative and incremental value relevance. Also, all of the accrual‐based performance measures have relative and incremental value relevance statistically higher than that of operating cash flows. Research limitations/implications - The results highlight the importance of accounting‐based performance measures in Egypt. The results shed light on the fixation on net income that is bottom line performance measure in the income statement where net income has the highest value relevance to Egyptian capital market. However, owing to relatively small sample size, given the thinness of the Egyptian capital market, these findings should be interpreted with caution. Originality/value - This study presents extended research on the usefulness of accounting‐based metrics as proxies for firms' performance in Egypt as one of emerging markets.