Creative Commons

This particular dissertation was written as part of the studies on the MSc in International Accounting, Auditing, and Financial Management at the International Hellenic University. This paper concentrates in the Norwegian market and examines the relationship between the financial performance of the listed companies in Børs stock exchange and an extensive set of variables like the size of the firm, debt/EBITDA ratio, financial leverage ratio etc. Panel data from 2004 since 2015 along with regression analysiswere used for the research. Furthermore, a second stage analysis for the pre-recession, recession and post-recession period has been made, in order to determine the possible influence in the firm’s profitability during these periods. Although scientific research has been made before for the profitability’s actual susceptibility for several countries and industries, no prior investigation has been made for the Norwegian market as a whole. The results indicated that during all the periods under analysis there is a negative relationship between profitability and debt/EBITDA ratio. Moreover, during the overall period (2004-2015) there is a positive significant relationship between the firms’ profitability and the size of the firm- regarding its assets-, fixed asset ratio and financial leverage ratio. During the pre-recession period the size of the firm and financial leverage ratio seem to influence profitability in a positive way and also in the post-recession period the size of the firm (assets) play a significant part too. On the other hand, during the recession period, results quite naturally indicates that financial leverage ratio influences Norwegian firms’ profitability and the asset factor is nowhere to be found.