IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jfr/afr111/v1y2012i1p53.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financing a Loss

Author

Listed:
  • David Rakowski
  • Eahab Elsaid

Abstract

When companies have a net loss accompanied by negative operating cash flows, they must decide how to handle the financing deficit, or, stated differently, they must decide how to finance the loss. By examining a large sample of firms with net losses, we document how companies respond to the financing shock that occurs with negative cash flow. For companies with a one-year loss, current assets decrease and current liabilities increase. While we observe that leverage ratios increase during a loss year, this increase has more to do with decreasing book equity than an increase in long-term debt. However, when the loss persists into a second year, companies make more fundamental changes, often downsizing by decreasing fixed assets and by issuing longer term debt.

Suggested Citation

  • David Rakowski & Eahab Elsaid, 2012. "Financing a Loss," Accounting and Finance Research, Sciedu Press, vol. 1(1), pages 1-53, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:jfr:afr111:v:1:y:2012:i:1:p:53
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/afr/article/download/894/513
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/afr/article/view/894
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Faulkender & Mitchell A. Petersen, 2006. "Does the Source of Capital Affect Capital Structure?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 45-79.
    2. Carlos A. Molina & Lorenzo A. Preve, 2009. "Trade Receivables Policy of Distressed Firms and Its Effect on the Costs of Financial Distress," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 38(3), pages 663-686, September.
    3. Frank, Murray Z. & Goyal, Vidhan K., 2003. "Testing the pecking order theory of capital structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 217-248, February.
    4. Merton H. Miller & Franco Modigliani, 1961. "Dividend Policy, Growth, and the Valuation of Shares," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34, pages 411-411.
    5. Mark T. Leary & Michael R. Roberts, 2005. "Do Firms Rebalance Their Capital Structures?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2575-2619, December.
    6. Shane A. Johnson, 2003. "Debt Maturity and the Effects of Growth Opportunities and Liquidity Risk on Leverage," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(1), pages 209-236.
    7. Gan, Jie, 2007. "Collateral, debt capacity, and corporate investment: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(3), pages 709-734, September.
    8. Kayhan, Ayla & Titman, Sheridan, 2007. "Firms' histories and their capital structures," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 1-32, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rebel A. Cole, 2013. "What Do We Know about the Capital Structure of Privately Held US Firms? Evidence from the Surveys of Small Business Finance," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 42(4), pages 777-813, December.
    2. Jamie Alcock & Eva Steiner, 2017. "The Interrelationships between REIT Capital Structure and Investment," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 53(3), pages 371-394, September.
    3. Gomes, Armando & Phillips, Gordon, 2012. "Why do public firms issue private and public securities?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 619-658.
    4. Murray Z. Frank & Vidhan K. Goyal, 2009. "Capital Structure Decisions: Which Factors Are Reliably Important?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 38(1), pages 1-37, March.
    5. Dang, Viet Anh, 2013. "An empirical analysis of zero-leverage firms: New evidence from the UK," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 189-202.
    6. Massa, Massimo & Yasuda, Ayako & Zhang, Lei, 2013. "Supply uncertainty of the bond investor base and the leverage of the firm," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 185-214.
    7. Shen, Carl Hsin-han, 2014. "Pecking order, access to public debt market, and information asymmetry," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 291-306.
    8. Andres, Christian & Cumming, Douglas & Karabiber, Timur & Schweizer, Denis, 2014. "Do markets anticipate capital structure decisions? — Feedback effects in equity liquidity," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 133-156.
    9. Bolaji Tunde Matemilola & Rubi Ahmad, 2015. "Debt financing and importance of fixed assets and goodwill assets as collateral: dynamic panel evidence," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 407-421, April.
    10. DeAngelo, Harry & DeAngelo, Linda & Stulz, René M., 2010. "Seasoned equity offerings, market timing, and the corporate lifecycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 275-295, March.
    11. Christopher F. Baum & Mustafa Caglayan & Abdul Rashid, 2017. "Capital structure adjustments: Do macroeconomic and business risks matter?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1463-1502, December.
    12. Wu, Xueping & Au Yeung, Chau Kin, 2012. "Firm growth type and capital structure persistence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 3427-3443.
    13. Harford, Jarrad & Klasa, Sandy & Walcott, Nathan, 2009. "Do firms have leverage targets? Evidence from acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 1-14, July.
    14. DeAngelo, Harry & DeAngelo, Linda & Stulz, Rene, 2007. "Fundamentals, Market Timing, and Seasoned Equity Offerings," Working Paper Series 2007-13, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    15. W. Allard Bruinshoofd & Leo de Haan, 2012. "Market timing and corporate capital structure: a transatlantic comparison," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(28), pages 3691-3703, October.
    16. Cooper, Ian A. & Lambertides, Neophytos, 2018. "Large dividend increases and leverage," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 17-33.
    17. M. E. Bontempi & L. Bottazzi & R. Golinelli, 2015. "Dynamic corporate capital structure behavior: empirical assessment in the light of heterogeneity and non stationarity," Working Papers wp988, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    18. Ramzi Drissi & Tarek Ghazouani & Assaad Ghazouani, 2013. "Financial Decision of Tunisian Firms in the Context of Market Timing Theory," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 3(4), pages 923-931.
    19. Frank, Murray Z. & Shen, Tao, 2019. "Corporate capital structure actions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 384-402.
    20. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2012. "Market timing, taxes and capital structure: evidence from Vietnam," OSF Preprints t3mvs, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jfr:afr111:v:1:y:2012:i:1:p:53. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sciedu Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.