Finansiell analys med avseende på risk
En studie av svenska fastighetsbolag
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the status of Swedish real estate companies in terms of financial health and risk of financial distress. The background is the ongoing financial crisis, which partly can be derived from the American real estate sector. Publicly available accounting information from 16 listed real estate companies has been analyzed for a period of one year using financial ratios covering both the operational and financial activities. We find that the deceleration in the economy and in the real estate sector have forced the real estate companies to make large write downs, in line with the relatively new accounting rules, IFRS. Write downs are likely to reoccur during the following periods and real estate companies will therefore probably be forced to continue to show negative results. Regarding the risk of financial distress, we have found that it is more likely to be higher in young, small companies. Another aspect that we investigate is the location of the real estate properties. A conclusion in this area is that companies which don?t focus on large cities are more exposed to the risk of financial distress.