Does Hedging Increase Firm Value

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Does Hedging Increase Firm Value? Evidence from the Gold Mining Industry Does Hedging Increase Firm Value? Rebekka Collins This paper studies the relationship between risk management practices and firm value for a sample of 44 North American gold mining firms from 1991 to 2000. We first show that hedging activities are recognized by the market, as hedging variables do have an impact on stock price exposure to gold prices. Controlling for other variables, however, we cannot find a positive relationship between hedging activities and firm values, as measured by Tobin’s Q ratio. If anything, the relationship is negative. This result is inconsistent with theories implying that hedging increases firm value. In this industry, commodity price exposure is transparent and easy to hedge by investors, so there is no reason to expect that gold mining firms hedging their gold price risk should have higher market values. 2 North American gold mining companies have vastly different hedging practices. At one end of the hedging spectrum, companies like American Barrick have been hedging extensively their gold production. At the other end, firms like Homestake Mining choose not to hedge their gold production at all. This raises a number of questions. First, what could justify such different hedging practices given that all of these companies have similar exposure to gold prices? Second, how do these hedging policies affect company valuations, if at all? Financial theories attempt to answer the first question by following one of two groups of explanations. The first group assumes that managers hedge to maximize firm value. In this context, hedging can achieve this goal by reducing the cost of financial distress, by reducing expected taxes, or by relieving the under-investment problem.1 The second group assumes that managers hedge for personal

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