Financial Sustainability in the Maritime Industry: Sub-Sectoral Evidence from an Emerging Economy

This study examines the determinants of financial sustainability in Turkish maritime industry by analyzing firm-level panel data from 190 ship and boat maintenance firms and 208 coastal shipping companies for the 2010–2022 period, comprising 5174 firm-year observations. Fixed-effects models with Driscoll–Kraay robust standard errors are employed to evaluate how asset structure, liquidity, and energy efficiency jointly affect firm profitability across subsectors, using the Operating Return on Assets (OROA) as the principal indicator of operational performance. The empirical results indicate substantial heterogeneity between maintenance and shipping firms. For maintenance firms, OROA shows a positive association with the Non-Current Assets to Total Assets ratio (NCATA) and the Economic Efficiency Ratio (EER) but a negative association with the Current Ratio (CR), suggesting that capital deepening and operational efficiency tend to correlate with stronger performance, whereas excess liquidity is associated with weaker outcomes. For shipping firms, OROA is positively associated with EER and Total Asset Turnover (TATR) but negatively associated with Fixed Asset Turnover (FATR) and CR, indicating relationships consistent with efficiency gains from energy management and asset utilization but linkages suggesting challenges from fleet aging and liquidity mismanagement. Overall, the findings suggest that the drivers of financial sustainability are associated with different structural conditions across maritime subsectors, highlighting the importance of targeted modernization, port efficiency, and energy-transition investment strategies.