The Influence of Intellectual Capital on the Financial Performance of Spanish New Firms

Abstract

Using the ordinary least squares regression, this paper explores the influence of intellectual capital on the financial performance of manufacturing new firms in Spain. The research is designed into three tiers for finding the differ-ences: comparing the economic downturn period with the upturn period; comparing the high-tech new firms with the low-tech new firms; comparing the impacts in the current period with in the future period. The results show that: first, intellectual capital influences firms’ financial performance in both the short-term period and long-term period; second, human capital works as the most influential component of intellectual capital with a positive effect in the models for current return and for future return; third, compared to the model for current return, in the model for future return there are more variables showing changes of their impacts between the downturn and upturn pe-riods; fourth, macro-economic situations tend to affect more on the factors for high-tech new firms than low-tech ones. Therefore, the findings can help the managers of new firms better utilize their intellectual capital elements to drive financial performance.