Competitive strategies are formulated and implemented with the purpose of creating shareholder value. This paper intends to identify and analyze the most significant value drivers for all firms included in the sampling and for each industry - manufacturing, service and commerce. We use the Shareholder Value Added (SVA) approach in order to identify the potential firm value drivers. In the literature review, we describe different return measures which intend to capture the value creation and their limitations; in addition, we detail the SVA approach. It is hypothesized that there is not significant statistical differences among the most prominent value drivers of firms competing in different industries. The data to calculate the firm value and the value drivers are obtained from a sample of Brazilian firms, including the period of 2001-2005. The statistical technique of panel data is applied. The main implication of these results is that the value driver "Operational Income" and "Investment in Working Capital" are the most prominent value drivers for all firms. Moreover, there is significant statistical difference among the most prominent value drivers across different industries - manufacturing and service; therefore, we could not confirm the research hypothesis. The conclusion is that firms competing in different industries emphasize different value drivers with the purpose of creating shareholder value. This paper contributes to the accounting research on this topic by identifying the key value drivers by industry level and also the differences in terms of the most relevant value drivers across industry level, based on a quantitative approach.
Shareholder value; Value drivers; Operational income; Investment in working capital; Panel data
