The increasing importance of sustainability in politics and business, particularly through the European Green Deal, has led to new reporting requirements. The EU Taxonomy Regulation aims to establish standards for classifying environmentally sustainable activities, thereby providing investors with a transparent and reliable basis for decision-making. This raises the question of whether these new reporting requirements actually influence the investment decisions of the capital market and, if so, how significantly. The temporal novelty of the EU Taxonomy has so far prevented comprehensive scientific investigation of its effects on stock prices and market performance, which has been identified as a research gap. The aim is therefore to close this gap and to investigate the research question of the impact that reported Taxonomy KPIs have on the value and predictive relevance for selected publicly traded European companies, and whether these can be linked with other already established valuation models such as the Ohlson model. The methodology includes a quantitative analysis of the EU Taxonomy metrics in connection with the market value of European companies in the EURO STOXX 50. The data sources include the financial reports of the companies, other publicly accessible data such as the EURO STOXX 50, and data from Bloomberg. Using multiple linear regression analyses, the influence of these metrics on market value is examined. The quantitative analysis shows that there is no direct statistically significant relationship between the EU Taxonomy KPIs and the value and predictive relevance for the market value of companies. This does not change when these metrics are integrated into the Ohlson model. Companies with a higher share of taxonomy eligible and taxonomy aligned activities do not benefit from higher market capitalization. This contradicts the current empirical research on sustainability in connection with value and predictive relevance, which largely indicates a statistically significant relationship. The outlook highlights the need for further research to develop and refine the Taxonomy standards and their practical application for investors and companies. A longer observation period and a larger sample size could yield new insights. Additionally, the analysis should be expanded to include additional financial and non-financial variables to obtain a more comprehensive picture. Despite the current lack of significant relationships between the EU Taxonomy metrics and the market value of companies, the continuous development and refinement of these standards can be crucial for future research and practice.
Die Wert- bzw. Prognoserelevanz der EU-Taxonomie-Kennzahlen für den Marktwert von Unternehmen im EURO STOXX 50
Moreno Rodriguez, M. (Author). 2024
Student thesis: Master's Thesis