MODERATING ROLE OF FIRM SIZE ON CORPORATE ATTRIBUTES AND TIMELINESS OF FINANCIAL REPORTS OF QUOTED CONSUMER GOODS COMPANIES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The need for a timely release of financial statements both to the companies and the stakeholders can hardly be overstressed. The companies would like potential investors to show interest in investing their resources with their timely reports, while, the stakeholders want timely information for them to take effective investment decisions. It is imperative therefore, to evaluate how timely these companies publish their annual reports. Against this background, this study investigates the effect of corporate attributes on financial reports timeliness of consumer goods companies in Nigeria with the moderating role of firm size from 2009-2018. The independent variable (corporate attributes) were represented by profitability and gearing ratio, while, the dependent variable is financial reports timeliness. The secondary panel data were sourced from the financial statements of the 15 sampled companies. The analysis was conducted with Robust (Generalized Least Square) multiple regression technique and the results show that profitability has an insignificant effect on financial reports timeliness, while gearing ratio has a significant effect on financial reports timeliness of the Nigerian consumer companies during the period studied. The result further show that firm size plays a significant moderating role on the effect of profitability and gearing ratio on financial reports timeliness of the studied companies. The study recommends among others that, gearing (borrowing) even though has significant negative effect on financial report delay should be handled with due diligence to avoid being counter-productive in case the cost becomes too high for the company to bear.