The Impact of Intangible Assets on the Company's Market Value: A Comparative Analysis in the Listed Companies on Latin America and USA

Abstract

Based on the assumption that the market price of a stock immediately incorporates all relevant information on the assets, which are a reasonable measure of the market value of a company, the impact on financial statements caused by restrictions to record intangible assets are of significant interest. This article aims to study the relationship between the corporate market value and intangible assets not recorded in order to verify the existence of a negative relationship, which would explain part of the differences between the book value and market value of companies, occasioned by the restrictions of accounting standards for records intangible assets, whose record is basically limited to situations of business combinations. For preparation of a multiple regression model to study this negative relationship between intangible assets recorded and the market value of companies, we selected an Intangibility Degree as the dependent variable, which represents how many times the market value is higher than book value, and IROAI (Return on Intangible Assets Ratio), a proxy developed which aims to capture the effect of the presence of intangible assets and the abnormal return of the total assets of the companies, since they are understated due to the absence of registration of internally generated intangible assets. Financial variables were also used as explanatory variables in order to reinforce the equation and isolate the effect of market expectations on intangible assets. This study confirmed the existence of a negative relationship between these variables in Brazilian, Mexican and Argentinean markets and allowed the development of a model indicative of potential intangible assets not recorded in these markets, which explains part of the difference between market and accounting values. The proxy IROAI was not statistically significant in United States of America's, Chile's, Peru's and Colombia’s markets.

Keywords: Intangible assets, degree of intangibility, market-to-book ratio, book and market value