Sustainability Reporting and Value Relevance: Empirical Evidence from the Beverage Industry

Purpose – The financial information represented in the Annual Report using the accounting numbers is important, but not sufficient, to evaluate the ability of value creation as companies no longer required to generate only financial performance but disclosure is required also for non-financial information. The growing importance of non financial information is confirmed by the recent approval of European Directive 2014/95/UE and by the new model of business reporting: Integrated Reporting, (IIRC, 2013). The objectives of the paper are: OB1: analysis of the recent requirements/frameworks for disclosure of non-financial information; OB2: recognition of the previous studies on the Value Relevance of non-financial information; OB3: empirical analysis of a sample of European listed companies belonging to the beverage industry. Design/methodology/approach –.The methodological approach is based on two different fields: 1) the content analysis to evaluate the quantity and quality of NFI in companies’ reports and 2) established valuation models The 1995 Ohlson’s model and its subsequent refinements has been employed in order to investigate the relationship between equity market values and NFI disclosure. The research will carry out a VR analysis on a sample of the European listed companies belonging to the beverage industry. Originality/value – The expected findings may provide an interesting insight into the current state of reporting of NFI and about the value relevance of NFI in the beverage industry. This research may contribute to the existing literature in regard to two different fields: 1) the recent studies on the field of non-financial disclosure, recently on Integrated Reporting (IIRC, December 2013) or on issues related to sustainability reporting 2) the previous studies on VR and NFI information. It is important to highlight that there are few studies on a VR analysis of NFI on the food and beverage industry.