The Impact of Brand Quality on Shareholder Wealth

This study examines the impact of brand quality on three components of shareholder wealth: stock returns, systematic risk, and idiosyncratic risk. The study finds that brand quality enhances shareholder wealth insofar as unanticipated changes in brand quality are positively associated with stock returns and negatively related to changes in idiosyncratic risk. However, unanticipated changes in brand quality can also erode shareholder wealth because they have a positive association with changes in systematic risk. The study introduces a contingency theory view to the marketing-finance interface by analyzing the moderating role of two factors that are widely followed by investors. The results show an unanticipated increase (decrease) in current-period earnings enhances (depletes) the positive impact of unanticipated changes in brand quality on stock returns and mitigates (enhances) their deleterious effects on changes in systematic risk. Similarly, brand quality is more valuable for firms facing increasing competition (i.e., unanticipated decreases in industry concentration). The results are robust to endogeneity concerns and across alternative models. The authors conclude by discussing the nuanced implications of their findings for shareholder wealth, reporting brand quality to investors, and its use in employee evaluation

Commodity betas with mean reverting output prices

This paper provides a theoretical derivation of commodity beta (stock price sensitivity to commodity price) using a contingent-claim model. The model incorporates operating leverage, financial leverage, costly financial distress, and mean reverting commodity prices; and highlights the important role played by the speed of reversion of the commodity price. It is used to identify theoretically the main determinants of commodity beta. Commodity beta is predicted to be an increasing function of the operating and financial leverage of the firm, and a decreasing function of the company's tax rate and the level, volatility and speed of reversion of the commodity price. Empirical tests with a sample of gold mining firms provide support for these predictions, particularly the new implications of the model (the effect of the commodity price's speed of reversion and the company's tax rate).