Managerial aspect of intangibles: Own development or external purchased intangible assets – What does really count?

Abstract

Managerial decision-making between the purchase of intangible assets and own investment or development of these types of assets is important in a company. From this perspective, the authors have analyzed the intangible assets and research and development expenditures in the position of exogenous variables affecting the business value of publicly traded companies in the paper. The authors use panel data of 313 European publicly traded companies from four time periods (2014-2017). The study finds that R&D expenses, as well as intangible fixed assets, can significantly explain market capitalization of the selected companies. The study also finds that increasing investment in the R&D causes an increase in the market capitalization. An analysis of the study expresses that firm with higher intangible investment tends to have higher market capitalization and that investment in intangible assets is rewarded in the form of higher intangible capital as a part of the market capitalization. So, the investment in the R&D is evaluated significantly and positively by the market. However, the strategy of externally acquiring intangible assets instead of their development is not positively evaluated by the market as we see the base on the results of our research.