| 英文摘要 |
In the New Economy, non-physical resources, i.e., company’s light assets, create more wealth than physical resources do. Currently, most light assets, except goodwill and intangibles, are not included in financial reports. The concept of asset-light – or asset-efficient – has been embedded in most of the business management areas. The pedigrees of asset-light model are “intellectual and intangible assets” in finance (Edvinsson and Malone 1987; Stewart 1997; Sullivan 2000); “marketing productivity” in marketing (Srivastava et al. 1998; Sheth and Sisodia, 2002); “Pareto optimality” in economics; and resource-advantage theory in strategic management (Barney 1991; Hunt and Morgan 1996). The resource-based view (RBV) characterized advantage resources of firms as valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and non-substitutable. “Resources” are the tangible and intangible entities available to the firm that enable them to produce efficiently and/or effectively market offerings that have value for some market segments (Hunt and Morgan, 1996). Barney (1991) and Srivastava et al. (1998) define marketing resources as any attribute, tangible or intangible, physical or human, intellectual or relational, that can be developed by the firm to achieve a competitive advantage in the market. Except brands, patents, and intellectual properties, most market-based intangibles such as customer relationships, channels, and networks are excluded from current accounting statements since those non-financial elements are invisible, untouchable, and hard to evaluate. To summarize, the asset-light strategy echoes the viewpoint of RBV-related perspectives in terms of focus (e.g., target segment and customer relationship) and of the focal point of the competitive advantage of firms (e.g., carry-over effect of brand equity). A practical light assets metrics is useful to assess potential profitability of a business. Connecting asset-light strategy with the financial performance is crucial. Maly and Palter (2002) consider asset-light as a business strategy that pursues capital efficiency by focusing the equity investment on those assets where a company’s expertise attains the best return for investors. From the measurement point of view, asset-light strategy refers to all intangible assets (both on and off the balance sheet) that create additional net benefits beyond the book value. This logic leads to our valuation model of light assets where the difference of ICA (invested capital at actual value) and ICB (invested capital at book value) equals a company’s ability to outperform an average competitor that has similar tangible assets. This paper uses ROIC (return on invested capital) measure to investigate the relationship between assets light and profitability of a company. First, financial performances of multinational motor companies were used to verify the validation of the light assets valuation model. Second, based on light-asset metrics, we rank global companies listed in BusinessWeek and Forbes from a different valuation perspective. Finally, we compare different light-assets valuation between Taiwan top 50 companies and global top 10 companies. Results show that: (1) the light-assets operations of most Japanese motor companies are superior to American counterparts; (2) business ranking based on light-assets valuation correlates more to Forbs ranking (multiple-indices) than BusinessWeek ranking (single index); and (3) comparing with the global top 10 companies, Taiwan top companies are “lighter” in enjoying higher return on invested capital. Our paper contributes to the development of asset-lights model, which unifies the multidisciplinary crucial reasoning on how the asset-efficient strategy can produce superior financial performance. |
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