The value relevance of accounting information including intangibles A comparative applied study of Companies Listed in the Egyptian stock market based on ownership structure

This study aims to examine the value relevance of accounting information for companies listed in the Egyptian stock market and the incremental increase in the explanatory power of accounting numbers resulting from the recognition of intangible assets and R&D expenses. In addition, the study aims to investigate how the firm’s ownership structure as being concentrated or non-concentrated can affect the value relevance of accounting information including intangibles. A sample of 375 firms listed in the Egyptian stock market during the period from 2013-2016 is used to test the research model which is based on the original Ohlson model by using a multivariate regression analysis. Results agreed with previous studies concerning the value relevance of accounting information especially earnings and provided evidence for the presence of a positive significant effect between earnings’ figures and the market value of firm’s equity and contradicted previous studies with respect to the significance of intangibles finding that each of total intangible assets and R&D expenses did not have a significant effect on market prices and did not improve the value relevance of the model. Two proxies were used to classify the sampled data into dispersed and concentrated structures which are the percentage of shares owned by the largest investor and the block holders’ percentage of ownership are used to investigate the value relevance of accounting information and the associated value relevance of intangibles under each ownership structure. The study provided a strong evidence for the existence of an inverse association between the percentage of ownership concentration and value relevance of accounting information; i.e. the less concentrated the firm’s ownership structure, the higher the value relevance of accounting information represented by the positive significance of earnings and book value of equity. In contrast, high concentrated ownership structures showed lower levels of value relevance with earnings numbers becoming more significant. Intangibles did not show any significance or value relevance in either of the two ownership structures.