Performance analysis of the Romanian food industry

Absztrakt

This research used a complex method to measure company performance instead of traditional financial ratios in order to gain a more comprehensive picture of firm efficiency. The study aims to investigate the efficiency of Romanian food industry companies. The performance analysis is based on the financial statements of Romanian food industry firms between 2018 and 2020. The companies included in the research database operate in different sub-sectors of the food industry. First, an empirical analysis was performed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to examine the efficiency of the firms considering all the companies and four sub-sectors. A multivariate and multifactorial analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed to investigate the efficiency and profitability differences, using several factors affecting the efficiency scores and the selected profitability ratios. Based on the efficiency analysis results, it can be concluded that the Romanian food companies operated with an efficiency of over 50% in all three years. However, it can also be seen that, while the number of companies operating with an efficiency of at least 70% in the first two years exceeded 50%, in the third year, this proportion was only 25%. The decrease was most likely an effect of the Covid-19 epidemic. It can be stated that the efficiency of Romanian food companies is generally average, taking into account what was mentioned before. The analysis by sub-sector shows that only the average efficiency value of the largest sub-sector (680 firms - 46.41%; Manufacturing of bakery and farinaceous products) is below the average efficiency indicator of the whole company database. Except for two sub-sectors (Manufacturing and processing of milk and dairy products; Manufacturing of bakery and farinaceous products), the average efficiency coefficient of all sub-sectors is above 0.7, which can be considered good enough. Based on the analysis of variance results, it can be concluded that county and size-1 (Ranking by Total Revenue) factors have a statistically significant effect on all profitability indicators. However, the years have had no significant impact. The analysis of variance for the efficiency scores shows that all factors affect them significantly. In the last case, the most substantial effects come from two size measures (6.85 and 9.40%), year (9.03%), and county (4.35%) factors.