기업의 재무적 구조가 외국인 주식투자에 미치는 영향

Abstract

We examine the financial characteristics of Korean listed and registered firms that are preferred by foreign stock investors who are known to yield higher returns than domestic institutional and private investors on average. For this purpose, we examine the integrated annual panel data from year 2000 to year 2006 to apply the multivariate regression analyses in which we use foreign share ratio for the dependent variable and we use sales growth rate, return on equity(%)(ROE), stockholders' equity to total assets(%), asset turnover ratio, price earning ratio(PER), payout ratio(%), business scale, trade scale and grouping firms as a dummy variable for the independent variables to reflect the effects of the financial characteristics of Korean firms on foreign stock investments in Korea. We made multivariate regression analyses on two types of models that differ one from another by grouping of firms. In the first model, we integrate the listed and registered firms in one regression. And in the second model, we made the regression on listed firms separately from the regression on registered firms to examine whether the effects on listed firms differ from the ones on registered firms. The results of our analysis on the first model in which listed and registered firms are integrated in one regression are as follows. If the other conditions are equal, we find that the larger a firm's sales growth rate is, the more easily accessible a firm's information is, the higher a firm's stockholders' equity to total assets as a profitability index is, the more underestimated a firm's stock price by its low price earning ratio(PER) is, and the higher a firm's payout ratio is, the more foreign stock investors prefer. To see our findings on the second model in which we separate the regression on listed firms from the regression on registered firms. For listed firms, it is shown that foreign stock investors consider more on return on equity(ROE), stockholders' equity to total assets, asset turnover ratio, price earning ratio(PER), payout ratio, business scale, and trade scale than on sales growth rate as a growth index. These results show that foreign stock investors on listed firms consider stability and profitability of firms more important than growth of firms when making investments. On the other hand, for registered firms, it is shown that foreign stock investors consider sales growth rate as a growth index but do not prefer firms with high stockholders' equity to total assets when making investments. And it is shown that they also consider sales growth rate, return on equity(ROE), and trade scale when making investments, but they are not shown to be relatively important. These results show that foreign stock investors on registered firms consider profitability and growth of firms more important than stability of firms when making investments. We also examine the average returns of foreign stock investors to see whether they yield higher returns than domestic investors. To do this, we classify the listed and registered firms into three groups of firms by the relative share ratios of foreign stock investors in the firms and we examine the average return of foreign stock investors in each group of firms. It is shown that for all three groups of firms we classified, the average returns of foreign stock investors are higher than KOSPI index return which is used as a benchmark market rate of return for comparison. And among the groups, the group of firms with relatively high foreign shares(Group H) is shown to yield the highest return.