Research On Capital Structure Of High-tech Listed Company

Dynamic capital structure theory believes that the change of external and internal environment of the enterprise makes the choice of optimal capital structure of enterprise becoming a dynamic process. The existence of trading costs makes the actual capital structure to deviate from its optimal capital structure. Therefore, enterprise needs to constantly adjust its capital structure in the changing environment so as to achieve the optimal status. The researchers observed that the average debt ratio level of high-tech enterprises is obviously lower than that of non-high-tech enterprises. High-tech enterprises show obvious "low financial leverage" characteristic. However, when making further empirical researches on the influential factors of this kind of "low financial leverage" characteristic of high-tech enterprises, contradictory conclusion is obtained. This is because the capital structure theory is not used to explain the actual observable differences between capital structures, but used to explain the differences between the optimal capital structures of different enterprises. It is limited to explain this kind of phenomenon under such static research frame. What is the source of "low lever" characteristic of high-tech enterprises? Is it because of the low optimal capital structure of high-tech enterprises or the adjustment to the optimal status? Which kinds of factors lead to the deviation from the optimal status? How to realize optimal capital structure? Theoretical analysis and empirical tests need to be made for all these questions.Firstly, the method of distinguishing high-tech enterprises is defined in this paper.The listed companies in China are divided into "high-tech group" and "non-high-tech group". It is discovered that Chinese listed high-tech enterprises do have obvious "low financial leverage" financial characteristic comparing with Chinese non-high-tech listed enterprises through the statistical analysis. It is also found out in the research at the same time that the capital structures of Chinese high-tech listed enterprises have remarkable differences in such aspects as year, industry and life cycle. Therefore, it is necessary to take the influence of such factors as macro economy, system, industry and life cycle into consideration when analyzing capital structure decision-making.The research hypothesis of "high-tech enterprises’ target debt ratio is lower than non-high-tech enterprises" is proposed based on the characteristics of "high risk","high yield" and "special position of intangible assets and technical innovation" of high-tech enterprises on the basis of the theoretical analysis on the influential factors of capital structure. The research hypothesis of "there is no differences in the capital structure optimal speeds of high-tech enterprises and non-high-tech enterprises" is proposed based on dynamic capital structure theory in this paper. As the optimal capital structure is an unobservable variable, and in order to prevent the one-sidedness of the conclusion, the non-balance panel data of Chinese high-tech listed enterprises from1999-2010is utilized and many methods such as OLS, fixed effect and Tobit return are adopted in this paper to make estimation. The fitted value of such models was set as the enterprise’s optimal capital structure. Meanwhile, the industrial annual median debt ratio is considered as the proxies of enterprise’s optimal capital structure. Through the comparison on the differences among the optimal capital structures of "high-tech group" and "non-high-tech group" with the method of Permutation Tests combination tests, the research hypothesis of "high-tech enterprises’target debt ratio is lower than non-high-tech enterprises" is verified. Standard dynamic model is further built in this paper. The two-stage and one-stage estimation methods are respectively adopted to estimate the optimization speed. And the two groups’ optimization speeds are compared through group tests and Bootstrap method. The test results show that there is no remarkable difference between the optimization speed of "high-tech group" and "non-high-tech group". In the dynamic research frame, the above mentioned two theoretical hypotheses are verified. So high-tech enterprises’ low lever phenomenon can be explained theoretically:namely the high-tech enterprises’characteristics determined its comparatively low optimal capital structure. Therefore, under the circumstance that the general dynamic optimal speeds have no differences, the actual debt ratio of high-tech enterprises is lower than that of non-high-tech enterprises.The essence of dynamic optimization of capital structure is a dynamic adjustment and control process. It needs to identify the influential factors to the dynamic optimization of capital structure. The factors affecting enterprises’capital structure optimization are simplified into four major characteristic variables:adjustment amount, company characteristic, decision-making efficiency of capital structure optimization and external market factor according to the analysis on trading costs factors and the specific situations of the capital structure optimization behaviors. Through the empirical test on the influential factors to the capital structure optimization speed of Chinese high-tech listed enterprises, the following conclusions are obtained:first, optimal debt ratio deviation degree is in remarkable negative correlation with optimization speed; enterprise scale, profit ability, growth, financial deficit are in positive correlation with optimization speed. Enterprise’s internal management efficiency and external environment are in positive correlation with optimization speed. Second, in order to further research the optimization degree of the capital structure of high-tech listed enterprises, the ratio between optimal debt ratio and actual debt ratio is defined as "optimal ratio". It is showed in the research that Chinese listed enterprises lack of debts, so the optimal ratio’s mean value is1.146. Third, it is discovered based on the dynamic research view that the actually observed debt ratio of high-tech enterprises has been decreasing with the slow-down of growth from the star-up stage to degenerating stage, but the optimal debt ratio is in the trend of that the target debt ratio increases with the decrease of growth. This kind of deviation is explained through the analysis on the differences of the influential factors to the capital structure optimization speeds in different life cycles.In the end, a conclusion is proposed to realize the dynamic optimization of capital structure, the dynamic optimal status of capital structure should be firstly concerned. The key to the realization of capital structure’s dynamic optimization lies in the control of optimization speed. And then the internal incentive system, supervision mechanism and external control, and restraint mechanism for realizing the optimization of capital structure are proposed from the angle of reducing trading costs.