The incidence of impairment of non-current assets in the face of the covid-19 crisis

Abstract

This papers aims to investigate whether the incidence of impairment of non-current assets increased with the advent of the covid-19 crisis. The Brazilian accounting literature on the impact of covid-19 on businesses still lacks empirical evidence, especially on the impact of the crisis on long-term accounting variables, for which the effect of covid-19 is more difficult to determine. The topic is relevant because it provides investors, regulators, preparers, and auditors with insights into the impact that a future crisis similar to covid-19 could have on businesses. The work is also relevant to academia, as it is one of the first to analyze the effect of the pandemic on long-term assets. The findings allow us to reflect on how companies and sectors are more or less exposed to the risk of impairment in crises, providing inputs for investment decision making in these scenarios. We studied 383 Brazilian publicly traded companies registered with the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) between 2016 and 2020. To test the hypothesis of this research, we manually collected the recognitions and reversals of impairment losses in 1,805 financial statements and, then, estimated a set of linear regression models with using fixed effects panel data. We found a positive and significant relationship between the effects of the covid-19 crisis and the incidence of impairment of non-current assets in Brazilian firms, which persisted even after controlling for various economic and financial factors. By separating the impairment of fixed and intangible assets, the findings suggest that intangible assets were more exposed to the covid-19 crisis than fixed assets. The results remained robust to various econometric analyses, including industry patterns, sub-samples, and the effect of the audit firm. This research contributes to the academic and professional debate by confirming the correlation between this crisis and the impairments recorded in financial statements, studying their effects on the accounting of non-current assets and on the long-term returns of the companies and sectors analyzed.