SECTORAL ANALYSIS OF THE DIFFERENCES IN PROFITABILITY OF CZECH AND GERMAN BUSINESS VENTURES – AN EMPIRICAL BENCHMARK STUDY

Profi tability measures are a lens through which business can be viewed and they form a common basis for investment decisions. Especially in areas close to national borders, these decisions could be linked to the question on which side of the border a venture should be located in order to realise country-specifi c comparative advantages that make the investment more profi table. Differences in profi tability between countries are driven by manifold aspects, including specifi c cost or revenue structures, fi nancing patterns and conditions, as well as taxation. The aim of this study is to identify the driving factors behind differences in profi tability of Czech and German fi rms on the basis of a comparative analysis. In this article, a two-step variance analysis is conducted. The fi rst step focuses on the operational differences in RoA between Czech and German ventures, which is based on deeper analyses of the asset turnover and the profi t margin. In the second step, the differences in RoE are analysed, considering influences from national taxation, conditions and patterns of financing and operations of the ventures. A model-based cumulative variance analysis quantifies the impacts of these underlying drivers of profitability with a comparative focus. For this reason, the average measures of these drivers from 2002 to 2014 – the longest time series available for both countries − are extracted from the BACH database, which provides harmonised accounting information. This paper confirms the hypothesis that specific drivers of profitability differ significantly between the two countries in certain business sectors and would cause substantial differences in profitability. Due to the overlapping nature of these individual effects, they compensate each other to a great extent. The results provide useful benchmarks that a company´s management can use to increase its profitability tackling specific comparative (dis-)advantages between the Czech Republic and Germany.