Family businesses and predictability of financial strength: a Hungarian study

The article is dedicated to the solution of the relevant issue, concerning management of enterprise`s financial sustainability. Financial sustainability assessment is one of the most important principles of enterprise`s activity, which provides information about financial capabilities of the company at the time of its evaluation and for the future. It is a requirement for the enterprise activity, which provides a high level of competitiveness, efficiency and intensity. Thus, the restoration and strengthening of financial sustainability is a priority task for the enterprise, a basic precondition for its effective functioning. The purpose of the research is to analyze financial sustainability and to improve the methods and approaches of its evaluation. The following methods were used in this research: financial and economic analysis, economic and mathematical modeling, analysis and synthesis, comparison. The main results of the study are following: the theoretical and essential characteristics of enterprise financial sustainability has been determined; the financial status of PJSC “Turboatom” has been analyzed; the taxonomic index of financial sustainability has been calculated and the forecast of its significance has been made, the approaches to increase enterprise financial sustainability have been proposed.

Due to the uniqueness of the services sector in terms of its characteristics and profitability, as well as the lack of studies on this sector, this study is considered to be the first to improve the knowledge of the key factors that play an important role in the profitability of the Jordanian services sector. This study investigates the effect of financial characteristics and capital structure on the profitability of all 46 services companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange over the period 2014–2018. This study applies fixed and random effects models to panel data variables, namely, size, tangible assets, growth, business risk, debt to equity ratio and debt to assets ratio as independent variables. At the same time, profitability was measured by operating profits (earnings before interest and tax divided by total assets), return on assets (ROA), and return on equity (ROE), which acted as the dependent variables. This study reveals the first evidence that the debt to assets ratio has a negative and significant impact on the profitability of services companies in Jordan. In line with the pecking order theory, this finding suggests that more profitable services companies tend to prioritize the use of retained earnings in financing business activities rather than in financing debt. This study shows that profitability is significantly and positively affected by size and business risk, while ROA is negatively affected by business risk. It also shows that tangible assets have a negative and significant effect on profitability, while growth has a positive and significant effect on operating profits.

This study applied Altman Z-score model to assess the bankruptcy risk of a set of multidisciplinary enterprises of various types, mainly small and medium enterprises, with data taken from official financial reports of 180 enterprises in Soc Trang province. The binary logistic regression was employed to assess the impact of non-financial and financial factors on the bankruptcy risk of enterprises. The research findings showed that both the non-financial factors such as business area, types and size of the business, the educational level of managers and executors and other characteristics, and the financial factors (indicators) such as earnings before tax, net profit/equity ratio, earnings before interest and tax/total assets ratio, equity/total debt ratio, affect the bankruptcy risk of enterprises. Predicting the bankruptcy risk and measuring its determinants play an important role not only as an effective managing tool of the business, but also as evidence for policymakers to support the sustainable development of business.