Coronapademi & kapitalstruktur : En kvantitativ studie om coronapandemins inverkan på företags kapitalstruktur

Sammanfattning: The corona pandemic has had a major impact on the whole world to different degrees. The Swedish companies have been affected and forced to review their capital structure. A good result for the companies is essential to be able to compete in a vulnerable market. During a crisis, companies need to be active in their financing decisions and how they choose to finance themselves. Macroeconomic factors have a significant impact on the capital structure, as crises can make firms more constrained. The impact of the crisis on society and specifically on companies is therefore interesting to study. With this as a starting point, the main purpose of the study is to investigate how the capital structure has changed during the transition to covid-19, 2019 and 2021. To be able to analyze the purpose, the study explores what has an impact on the company's liabilities in relation to assets. The study has a quantitative research method with a deductive approach. The sample consists of 150 Swedish listed companies where the data set is made up of the companies annual reports. Six hypotheses have been developed to be tested through regression analyses. The dependent variables tested are total liabilities, current liabilities and long-term liabilities relative to total assets. The independent variables consist of age, size, profitability and growth. The result shows that marginal differences exist for the debt ratios between the period before and during the pandemic. Some of the independent factors have had a greater impact than others on the company's debt ratio, including size. Age is the factor that has no influence on the companies' leverage ratio. The study’s findings contribute to better understanding of how the corona pandemic affects the capital structure of Swedish companies.