EVA™, EPS, ROA and ROE as Measures of Performance in Australian Banks: A Longitudinal Study

By Gregory Laing, Kirsty Dunbar

This research empirically tests the relative and incremental information content of performance measures EVA, EPS, ROA and ROE against the Market Value of the shares in the four major Australian banks. Data was obtained from database sources for the purpose of calculating the EVA and extracting the EPS, ROA, ROE and Share Market Value of the four major banks in Australia for the years 2003 to 2011.

Two null hypotheses were derived from the literature and tested using the Multiple Linear Regression method. In contrast to results commonly reported, no significant relationship was found between EVA and the market value in terms of relevant information content. However, the incremental information content of EVA was found to be significant in the model tested. This study did not test the different models for calculating EVA which future research may investigate. Future research may also examine more performance measures in the model.

JAMARv13.1-EVA