Does Property Segment Distribution Affect the Capital Structure of Real Estate Companies? : An Investigative Study of the Operational Risk within Different Property Segments and its Effect on the Debt Ratio in a Company

Sammanfattning: The real estate sector is a capital-intensive industry, where the combination of debt and equity is used to finance the property investment. Companies tend to increase the loan-to-value ratio, to use financial leverage. However due to banks being more restrictive with their lending as well as having different ways of assessing risk in different property companies, there is a belief that the loan-to-value ratio is affected by the property segment distribution in a company. Based on previous research, there are many factors that could affect the loan-to-value (LTV) in a company such as size, profitability, revenue growth and cost of debt. This paper aims to examine these factors, as well as the operational risk that might be visible in the property segment distribution. The study was done through using a quantitative approach by investigating the largest real estate companies in each Swedish municipality. 614 Swedish real estate companies were investigated and pooled into an OLS regression model. Based on the regression, there is enough evidence in this paper that shows that factors such as size, profitability, revenue growth and cost of debt all have significant impact on the LTV. Furthermore, no general conclusion regarding the relationship between property segment distribution and LTV was found in this paper. Although, there is evidence that residentials- and small house units affect the LTV positively while industrial units affect the LTV negatively.