A comparative study of financial performance in Iranian refinery and petrochemical companies pre- and post-privatization

Habib Takmil¹ Abbas Alimoradi² Sayed Mohammad Javadi³

1) Department of accounting, Petroleum University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. -
2) Department of accounting, Petroleum University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. -
3) Department of accounting, Petroleum University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. -

Publication : 3rd.International Conference on Modern Research’s in Management,Economics & Accounting(3meaconf.com)
Abstract :
Theoretically it is expected that the performance of companies after privatization to be improved, however many researches about the company s performance after privatization have reported conflicting results. Conflicting results obtained in previous studies and the lack of empirical research regarding Iran s oil industry encouraged us to study the effects of privatization in this industry once more. This study attempts to evaluate the impact of privatization on the financial performance of petrochemical companies and refineries of Iran. For this purpose, annual financial reports of 11 petrochemical companies and refineries that transferred by stock exchange during the years 2007 to 2014 were studied. The results of hypothesis testing show that privatization, improved corporate net income, but in terms of return on assets, return on equity, days sales outstanding, debt ratio and debt to equity ratio indices, there is no statistically significant difference between the performance of the companies before and after transfer to the private sector. However, based on the descriptive statistics, the company s performance trends show improvement.
Keywords : Privatization Financial performance Financial Ratios Refineries Petrochemical companies Iran s oil industry