Stock Return Predictability with Financial Ratios: An Empirical Study of Listed Manufacturing Companies in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate financial ratios’ predictive power, using the yearly time series data during the period of 2012-2017 for 33 listed manufacturing companies in Colombo Stock Exchange. This study specifically identifies the financial ratios, which are acknowledged as the predictors of stock returns in the share market, to test the stock return predictability. The financial ratios include the ratio of dividend yield, earnings per share, and earnings yield which are most useful and effective on stock return predictability in order to cover a wide range of predictions which have been used by all most all the previous researches. The stock return predictability is analyzed by regressing the dividend yield, earning per share and earning yield respectively on the yearly stock returns from 2012 to 2017. The results show high predictability power, since the R²-value is high and the coefficients are very significant and autocorrelation corrected standard errors. The results reveal that the three ratios hold a somehow predictive power regarding stock returns of the Listed Manufacturing Companies in Colombo Stock Exchange.