EMPIRICAL REVIEW OF IMPLICATIONS OF FINANCIAL LEVERAGE ON PERFORMANCE OF QUOTED OIL AND GAS COMPANIES IN NIGERIA

This study was conducted to examine the implication of financial leverage on performance of quoted oil and gas companies in Nigeria. This is premeditated on the fact that debt capital is usually acquired by firm to finance assets with the expectation the returns from such investments will exceed the costs of the debt capital used. Often, this is always not the case either because of inappropriate management strategies or other reasons. Ex-post-facto research design was adopted involving use of panel secondary data as published by eight(8) oil and gas companies selected from the population of twelve(12) firms quoted on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) for the period 2006-2020. Descriptive and multiple linear regression statistics were used to analyze data collected. The dependent variable was return on Assets (ROA), proxy for financial performance and independent variables being financial leverage decomposed into Debt Ratio (DR), Debt-to-Equity Ratio (DER), Long-term Debt Ratio (LTDR) and Cost of Debt (COD,) Results Shows DR, LTDR and COD had negative and significant implications on ROA, while DER also had negative but insignificant implications on ROA of quoted oil and gas firms in Nigeria. Hence, it was concluded that during the period of the study, leverage had negative and significant implications on financial performance of oil and gas firm in Nigeria. It was recommended that oil and gas firm should minimize debt capital usage in their financial structure to shore-up returns.