IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fma/fmanag/jandikmakhija05.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can Diversification Create Value? Evidence from the Electric Utility Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Tomas Jandik
  • Anil K. Makhija

Abstract

Despite SEC and state-level resistance, and contrary to the trend pursued by other firms, many electric utilities have diversified into non-electric and unregulated businesses. Moreover, this failure to focus has been rewarded with higher firm values, again contrary to the discounts documented in the literature for other diversifying firms. Prior literature has questioned whether these premiums (or discounts) can be attributed to diversification per se. Rather, these premiums could arise from the characteristics of the diversifying firms, which have then endogenously chosen to diversify. In a new approach, where regulation can make the diversification decision largely exogenous, we examine the investment policies of the comparable electric-segments in the diversifying and non-diversifying utilities. We find that singlesegment electric utilities over-invest compared to diversifying utilities, which explains their diversification premiums and implies that diversification can create value by opening up new investment opportunities.

Suggested Citation

  • Tomas Jandik & Anil K. Makhija, 2005. "Can Diversification Create Value? Evidence from the Electric Utility Industry," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 34(1), Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:fma:fmanag:jandikmakhija05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shao‐Chi Chang & Sheng‐Syan Chen & Jung‐Ho Lai, 2008. "The Wealth Effect of Japanese‐US Strategic Alliances," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 37(2), pages 271-301, June.
    2. Nilakshi Borah & Liu Pan & Jung Chul Park & Nan Shao, 2018. "Does corporate diversification reduce value in high technology firms?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 683-718, October.
    3. Boyle, Glenn & Evans, Lewis & Guthrie, Graeme, 2006. "Estimating the WACC in a Regulatory Setting: An Assessment of Dr Martin Lally's paper 'The Weighted Average Cost of Capital for Electricity Lines Businesses' of 8 September 2005," Working Paper Series 18939, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    4. Kishimoto, Jo & Goto, Mika & Inoue, Kotaro, 2017. "Do acquisitions by electric utility companies create value? Evidence from deregulated markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 212-224.
    5. Goto, Mika & Makhija, Anil K., 2007. "The Impact of Competition and Corporate Structure on Productive Efficiency: The Case of the U.S. Electric Utility Industry, 1990-2004," Working Paper Series 2007-10, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    6. Sueyoshi, Toshiyuki & Goto, Mika, 2011. "Operational synergy in the US electric utility industry under an influence of deregulation policy: A linkage to financial performance and corporate value," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 699-713, February.
    7. An Yan, 2006. "Value of Conglomerates and Capital Market Conditions," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 35(4), pages 5-30, December.
    8. Boyle, Glenn & Evans, Lewis & Guthrie, Graeme, 2006. "Estimating the WACC in a Regulatory Setting: An Assessment of Dr Martin Lally's paper 'The Weighted Average Cost of Capital for Electricity Lines Businesses' of 8 September 2005," Working Paper Series 3844, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    9. Charles A. Brown & Chris R. McNeil, 2008. "Internal capital market subsidies and industry downturns," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 48(3), pages 337-361, September.
    10. Velasco, Pilar, 2022. "Is bank diversification a linking channel between regulatory capital and bank value?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(4).
    11. repec:vuw:vuwscr:18939 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Salas-Fumás, Vicente & Rosell-Martínez, Jorge & Delgado-Gómez, José Manuel, 2016. "Capacity, investment and market power in the economic value of energy firms," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 28-39.
    13. Sueyoshi, Toshiyuki & Goto, Mika, 2009. "Can environmental investment and expenditure enhance financial performance of US electric utility firms under the clean air act amendment of 1990?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4819-4826, November.
    14. Goto, Mika & Low, Angie & Makhija, Anil K., 2008. "Diversification, Productivity, and Financial Constraints Empirical Evidence from the US Electric Utility Industry," Working Paper Series 2008-3, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    15. Sueyoshi, Toshiyuki & Goto, Mika & Shang, Jennifer, 2009. "Core business concentration vs. corporate diversification in the US electric utility industry: Synergy and deregulation effects," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4583-4594, November.
    16. Giacomo Calzolari & Carlo Scarpa, 2016. "Conglomerates And Regulation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(3), pages 1648-1669, July.
    17. Oesterle, Michael-Jörg & Richta, Hannah Noriko & Fisch, Jan Hendrik, 2013. "The influence of ownership structure on internationalization," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 187-201.
    18. Lee, Sangwoo & Park, Kwangwoo & Shin, Hyun-Han, 2009. "Disappearing internal capital markets: Evidence from diversified business groups in Korea," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 326-334, February.
    19. Nippa, Michael, 2011. "Zur Notwendigkeit des Corporate Portfolio Management: Eine Würdigung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung der letzten vier Jahrzehnte," Freiberg Working Papers 2011/02, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fma:fmanag:jandikmakhija05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Courtney Connors (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fmaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.