The Impact of the R&D Investments towards Short-term Corporate Valuation -- Evidence from Chinese Listed Healthcare Companies

Abstract

R&D investments impact the corporate valuation in the healthcare industry, and the outbreak of COVID-19 influences their relationship. This paper applied simple linear regression to analyse the influence of R&D investments on corporate valuation among Chinese listed healthcare companies, showing an enormous difference between R&D intensity and personnel. R&D intensity will have a negative relationship with corporate valuation in the current year, while R&D personnel will positively influence it. Further, after the pandemic outbreak, the nexus between corporate valuation and R&D intensity transferred into positive, while its R&D personnel counterpart is still not significant. These results display that it is essential for Chinese listed healthcare companies to improve corporate valuation through altering their R&D policy, such as recruiting R&D personnel, paying attention to R&D investments and their effectiveness, and learning the experience from the epidemic outbreak. In addition, this paper also enriches the literature review of R&D spending and corporate valuation.