The Capital Resources and Performance Analysis of U.S. E-tailers

• Main Authors: Wu Meng-jin, 吳孟津
• Other Authors: Hu Shing-yang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/95019625934080226424

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 財務金融學研究所 === 89 === After the April crash of year 2000, the internet E-commerce business models and strategies were widely discussed and rechecked by all investors and researchers. Although countless papers and reports about E-tailers were published, seldom of them put emphasis on the financial side of E-tailers. This thesis tries to cut into the financial issues of U.S. E-tailers, find out the capital resources and financing instruments, and analyze the performance of E-tailers under different financial conditions. The equity instruments are the most used financing instruments of E-tailers. Under serious competition and rapid changes of the internet industry, E-tailers have low debt/equity ratios, which show the difficulties of persuading creditors to lend their money. Even financing with the equity instruments, E-tailers have to carefully design the securities to reduce agency problems and information asymmetry between managers and stockholders. Venture capital plays an important role in E-tailing industry. Though venture capitalists pay lots attention on their portfolio start-ups, it shows from the empirical study that “the percentage of stocks that VC hold” and “the number of seats in board of directors that VC get” both have negative effects on the performance of E-tailers. These negative effects remind us that more venture capitalists’ involvement don’t guarantee better performance, and this finding can be a complementarity of previous researches. Most E-tailers still struggle to get rid of red inks of their financial statements, but the performance of the E-tailing industry is getting better and better, it is still worth waiting. From the empirical study, factors that have positive effects on E-tailers’ performance are “percentage of stocks hold by management group and directors” and “debt/equity ratio”, while the two factors mentioned above have negative effects. Besides, E-tailers merged by other companies or bankrupt have higher percentage of VC involvement than those that still survive.