The Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic in Financial Performance of Firms Listed in the Athens Stock Exchange

The world was severely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, causing, among others, possibly the worst global recession since 1930s. Of course not all sectors of economic activity were influenced in a similar way. While pharmaceutical companies had a boost in their profitability, other sectors including travel, tourism and leisure experienced huge losses and needed to be subsidized by the government. The current study investigates the impact of COVID-19 pandemic in the financial performance of firms listed in the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). The sample includes 82 companies listed in the ASE during the period 2018–2021 according to clearly defined criteria. The selected firms represent a wide variety of business sectors, both industrial and services. The financial performance of those firms is depicted by a set of financial ratios. Findings of the empirical analysis do not suggest that pandemic had a significant impact on the financial performance of the sample firms. However, sectoral classification appears to affect the association between financial performance and pandemic. It appears that Industrial Mining and Metals firms and General Retail firms experienced an increase in their liquidity and profitability in the pandemic period while their leverage decreased in the same period. On the other hand, Technology and Hardware firms and Travel Leisure firms experienced a decrease in their liquidity and profitability, but an increase in their leverage. Generally speaking, services and crowd-dependent industries (such as that tourism) are most negatively impacted by the current COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this study maybe useful to potential investors for making investment decisions as well as to policy makers for dealing with risk and the consequences of unpredictable events.