【讲座时间】2023年5月29日  14:00

【讲座地点】BV韦德108室

【讲座主题】Customer Base Concentration, Investment efficiency, and Growth Options

【嘉宾介绍】张国昌，香港大学，会计学教授

Guochang Zhang is the Chung Hon-Dak Professor in Accounting at the University of Hong Kong. He previously held academic positions at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and The University of Waterloo, Canada. He received a Bachelor degree (Engineering) from Shanghai Jiaotong University, and an MSc (Accounting) and a PhD (Finance) from the University of British Columbia. He has published papers in top academic journals including Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and Management Science. His monograph “Accounting Information and Equity Valuation: Theory, Evidence, and Applications” has been used as teaching materials for doctoral and master programs and executive training. He previously served as an Associate Editor of European Accounting Review, a member of the Financial Reporting Standards Committee of the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and an independent non-executive director of a listed company.

【内容提要】

We hypothesize that customer base concentration (CC) is a source of operational inflexibility that impedes firms’ capital investment and thus reduces their ability to exploit real options. Supporting this hypothesis, we empirically document a negative relation between CC and the responsiveness of capital investment to profitability signals. This result holds both in cross sectional samples and from using two plausibly exogenous shocks to CC (customer CEO turnover and import tariff reductions in customer industries). The documented effect is stronger when firms have low bargaining power vis-à-vis their customers, while it is muted where firms’ major customers are governments (which are likely to be less opportunistic). Along with reduced investment responsiveness, firm value as a function of profitability becomes less convex, suggesting that CC hinders the ability to utilize growth options. Finally, the effects of CC are stronger in industries of high (versus low) capital asset reusability, suggesting that inflexibilities stemming from sales and production activities have substantive effects.