How Selected Macroeconomic Factors Affect the Corporate Profitability of Transportation and Storage Companies in Selected European Economies

Abstract

The goal of most companies is to make a certain amount of profit, to which all-important business decisions are a subject. The importance of this goal is evidenced by the fact that profitability indicators belong to the key indicators of business success. Unfortunately, profitability is affected by many often-unpredictable factors, which usually come from the external environment of the company. In this research, these factors are represented by GDP growth rate, inflation rate, reference interest rate, unemployment rate, gross fixed capital formation and the exchange rate against the euro. The aim of the research is to find out whether selected factors influence the company’s profitability or not. Companies of the transportation and storage industry coming from eight selected economies of Central and Eastern Europe are the subject of the analysis. The industry will be analysed at the level of fifteen sub-industries using the Generalized Method of Moment. The data cover the period 2010–2018 and provide information on approximately 25,000 companies. The size of the sample does not allow the results to be summarized in one sentence, but they showed that companies in the selected industry are for the most part negatively affected by the reference interest rate of the economy.