Intellectual Capital and Financial Performance of Listed Manufacturing Companies in Nigeria

This study was conducted to examine the influence of intellectual capital on financial performance of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. This was premised on the fact that continuous existence of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria is guaranteed by the level of improvement in financial performance. Improvement in financial performance may depend upon the level of intellectual capital possessed by the entities. This necessitated the conduct of the present study to assess the direction of all the variables of intellectual capital on financial performance indicator. The ex-post facto research design was employed in the study. The population was made of thirty-three (33) listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria that cut across two sub-sectors on the floor of Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) as at December 2022 of which twenty-six (26) entities were sampled for the study. The dependent variable was Financial Performance (ROE) while the independent variable was Intellectual Capital (IC) measured by Human Capital (HC) and Relational Capital (RC). Panel data were collected from annual reports and financial statements of the sampled entities from 2013 to 2021. The sourced data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Fixed effect regression technique was used in the study. From the analyses, it was discovered that HC and RC had positive and significant influence on ROE of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. It was concluded, by the researcher, that intellectual capital had a positive and significant influence on financial performance of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. It was recommended that investments should be made on training and development programmes for employees of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria by granting them with some funds to enable them further their academic and professional studies and relational capital should be improved by investing appropriately on marketing and distribution activities to create relationship with other companies and customers.