Following International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) mandatory adoption in 2005, the criteria determining the accounting treatment of Research and Development (R&D) expenditure have changed for UK listed companies that publish consolidated financial statements. Therefore, recent literature raises concerns about the value relevance of R&D assets and expenses in the UK, after 2005. Using very recent data, we respond to these calls for research. Adding to the absence of prior evidence regarding the pre-IFRS period, we find that the capitalized portion of R&D is significantly positively related to market values, suggesting that the market perceives these items as successful projects with future economic benefits. R&D expenses are significantly negatively related to market values under IFRS, supporting the proposition that they reflect no future economic benefits and thus they should be expensed. Also in contrast with evidence regarding the pre-IFRS period, R&D expenses are negatively value relevant only for large companies. Accordingly, we argue that transition to IFRS does have implications on the valuation of R&D expenditure in the UK
The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.