The Level of Diversification on the Firms of the Iberian Market

Abstract

It is a fact that a company’s durability may depend on its capacity to readjust to a world in continuous change. Diversification strategies should be a security device, reduce the risk, and at the same time, search for possible profitable opportunities. Therefore, when a diversified firm follows one of its business sections and realizes that the performance is worse than foreseen, this negative impact may be diminished by other segments with better performance. Contextually, the current study aims to determine a correlation between value and corporate diversification in the Iberian market. We use Tobin’s Q as the measure for value and the Herfindahl Index to measure diversification. In addition to the study of correlation, this paper also analyses the level of diversification for the firms that integrate the Iberian market and if their market value is above or below their book value. Using these metrics, we found a negative correlation between value and diversification in the Iberian Market. In our sample, we also found that highly diversified firms performed worse than focused firms on average. In the Portuguese sample, we were able to determine the level of diversification that maximizes the Tobin’s Q of a firm. According to Tobin's Q, our sample was characterized by a low level of diversification in general and that the companies were slightly overvalued.