Capital Structure and Firm Performance Nexus: Nigerian Consumer Goods Sector Analysis (Published)
This study investigated the effect of capital structure on firm performance using a sample of seven companies listed under the consumer goods sector of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The study adopted return on assets as proxy for performance (the response variable), while capital structure components such as debt to equity, debt to capital employed and equity to capital employed were used as the explanatory variables. Secondary data were collected from the annual published financial reports of the sampled consumer goods sector companies for the period 2009 to 2018. The study employed descriptive statistics and multiple regression technique based on the E-view 9.0 software as the methods of data analysis. The results revealed that debt to equity has insignificant positive impact on return on assets, debt to capital employed and equity to capital employed had negative but insignificant effect on return on assets. Over all, capital structure has no significant effect (at 5% level) on firm performance in the consumer goods sector. Based on the findings, the study recommended among others that the management of consumer goods sector companies should exercise caution in considering the use of debt finance (following the Pecking order theory) in their capital mix up to the optimal limits, as debt to equity ratio provided insignificant positive effect on performance; and that further studies be conducted on other sectors of the economy to provide more robust generalized inferences.
Keywords: Assets, Capital, Debt, Equity, Performance, Returns, Structure, employed