Perspectives of the Influence of the Listed Companies' Financial Indicators on a Share Price to Sales Revenues Ratio during the Wave III, V and VII of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in Poland

Abstract

Theoretical background: Market indicators are considered to be one of the most important groups of financial metrics used by investors when valuing shares. Among the quotients describing the environment of the listed entities, a security's Price-to-Sales ratio deserves a special attention. Its pattern allows the company's price to be measured in relation to quarterly/annual revenues, not profits. Thus, the C/P ratio indicates the extent to which a given company is underestimated or overestimated by the market in comparison to sales achieved.

Purpose of the article: This paper focuses on constructing a model of potential exogenous variables from financial analysis determining the dynamics of changes in the C/Ps of the public companies. Measuring enterprise's value was conducted on a sample of 172 entities listed at the Warsaw Stock Exchange during three phases of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, covering its financial statements as per the first quarter of 2021-2023.

Research methods: In the example below statistical tools such as linear correlation matrices and multiple regression functions were applied within a given time horizon. Due to the failure to meet the assumptions for random components variances' homogeneity of the individual objects series a generalized least squares (GLS) method was used, comparing the obtained outcomes with its classical counterpart. The statistical significance of the parameters in each equation was verified by means of the Student's t-test at the significance level α = 0.05.

Main findings: The study confirmed statistically significant relationships in fluctuations between the C/P ratios and selected financial indicators during waves III and V of the COVID-19 pandemic (the adjusted R²^ coefficients in the generalized regression formulae equalled to 0.92 and 0.89, respectively). In both cases, C/P fluctuations were positively influenced by changes in the debts level, in the sense of the Financial Sustainability Ratio (FSR). On the contrary, negative impacts of C/Ps in the area of profitability, i.e. on Operating Margin (OM) indices and ROS ratios were noticed. Alternatively, the dynamics of the company's value could be described to a limited extent by financial indicators during the wave VII of the COVID-19 diffusion (adjusted R²^ = 0.62), with its maximum traditionally recorded by ROS and FSR ratios. The transformation of the residuals matrices towards the generalized least squares method resulted in decreases in standard errors of coefficients building estimation intervals around the mean.