企業社會責任公司的股票購回之宣告效果

Abstract

過去文獻顯示企業社會責任(CSR)可以增進公司的財務績效， CSR公司的企業社會責任可被視為一種公司聲譽的保證，進而提升公司價值，但也有文獻顯示CSR與財務績效二者關係不明。本研究利用CSR公司從事股票購回事件中，企業社會責任的內涵是否能為公司創造價值? 過去文獻表示當公司宣告股票購回時，可能會因為公司的股價被低估，而有顯著為正的宣告報酬，也有文獻指出有多餘自由現金流量的公司更易執行股票購回; 而CSR相關的文獻中亦指出缺乏投資機會的公司也可能將資源投入到CSR中。本研究提出對立假設，CSR公司所營造的聲譽的保證可被視為”保險效果”，從事企業社會責任的公司(CSR公司)相較於沒有從事企業社會責任的公司(非CSR公司)，在宣告股票購回後，會有較佳的宣告效果(即有更高的宣告報酬); 相反地，CSR公司也可能被市場解讀為自由現金流量過多、缺乏投資機會，而導致股價績效相對表現較差。此外，本篇嘗試檢視股票購回公司的實際購回政策情形，來推論企業社會責任公司的聲譽保證。本篇結果中，CSR公司和非CSR公司在購回宣告後，都有顯著為正的宣告報酬，與過去股票購回研究一致。然而，CSR公司較非CSR公司之間的差異是顯著為負的關係，即CSR公司表現較非CSR公司較差。公司的購回情形方面，CSR公司則較非CSR公司有較多的完成購回事件，雖然實際購回的比率沒有顯著差異。此外，長期下CSR公司與非CSR公司財務表現都相較市場顯著較佳，但CSR公司仍然較非CSR公司財務表現顯著較差。Prior studies show that CSR help improve firm’s financial performance, while some show no evidence. In addition, some studies show that a better CSR score can create a higher financial performance, which in turn leads to the increase of firm’s value. In this study, we intend to investigate what extent the CSR creates value for firms executing important corporate decisions. The extant literature shows the positive announcing returns when firms announced share repurchase; this could be attributed to share price undervalued; while some proposed that firms might undertake share repurchase due to too much free cash flow. We proposed two competing hypotheses: one asserted that CSR-firms would lead to higher positive announcing returns in the event of share repurchase than non-CSR firms due to “insurance effect” induced by more prestigious reputation and the other asserted that the market will react less favorably to CSR-firms than non-CSR firms due to lack of investment opportunity. Besides, firms accredited with CSR could be regarded as “certification” on their reputations. We tried to conduct the buy-back policy of share repurchase firms with the actual share repurchased. We hypothesize that firms with CSR will follow their buy back policy strictly as they claim in the share repurchase announcement, compared to others that are non-CSR firms. Our CSR and non-CSR firms sample show a significant positive announcing return around share repurchase announcement, which are consistent with prior repurchased studies. However, CSR firms underperform non-CSR firms with a significant negative difference in announcing returns. Besides, our results show that CSR firms acquired more “complete” share repurchase events than non-CSR firms, but there is no significant difference in actual share repurchased between CSR and non-CSR firms. In the long-term, there is a significantly positive abnormal return, however, CSR firms still underperform non-CSR firms.