Using fundamental, market and macroeconomic variables to predict financial distress: A study of companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange

Abstract

This study presents a three-stage approach in determining financial distress of companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. A novel feature of the present study is that it deviates from a binary classification of corporate distress prediction to present a multinomial outcome where the model predicts distressed, depressed and healthy companies. The research results show an improvement in the prediction accuracy rate when fundamental data is combined with market-based data. However, the further addition of macroeconomic indicators does not enhance the prediction accuracy.