Struktura kapitału, a efektywność funkcjonowania przedsiębiorstw sektora energetyki w krajach Unii Europejskiej

Abstract

Energetic security is becoming one of the priorities of the economic policies of the European Union. One of the elements on which it depends is adequate financial standing of companies producing and distributing electricity. A factor contributing to this is the structure of funding sources. Based on the assumption that in order to maintain maximum energy security, risk should be avoided, hence the assumption that it will be natural to avoid debt in companies in the energy sector. That would disprove the fundamental theory of Modigliani Miller, describing the structure of financing. The aim of the publication is an attempt to identify the relation between the level of debt in energy companies performing in United Europe countries sector and their profitability. factors that determine the structure of sources of financing in the energy sector in the EU. The article poses three hypotheses: in the energy sector dominates financing by equity (in medium and large companies), company size does not matter for the financial structure, as well as the share of debt financing affects the efficiency measured ROA of companies in the energy sector (in average and large enterprises). Research used descriptive statistics and regression analysis. We also used appropriate tests supporting the inference regarding normal distribution and equality of medians. The results obtained indicate that the first and the second hypothesis is true, the third hypothesis was not confirmed. For the wider importance of research, this means that the energy sector, which in this study was represented by a group of European companies for financing investments are backed by some predominantly equity.