A New Value Premium : Value Creation in the Swedish stock market

Abstract: Value creation in any stock market is a highly discussed topic with an abundant amount of generalized models aiming to predict future returns. Although no such tool exists yet there are, however, acknowledged models from peer-reviewed journals that have received a lot of attention over the years in examining company performance. This thesis is therefore built on the well-known Fama-French three-factor model. The original Fama-French three-factor model is extended by adding a new size premium and a new value premium, both based upon the spread between the return on invested capital (ROIC) – the weighted average cost of capital (WACC). The purpose of this is to make the returns of a portfolio account for cash flow and debt on top of risk, size, and value premium for a company. This thesis finds that the ROIC-WACC spread adds explanatory power to the existing Fama and French three-factor model on the Swedish stock market. The research method of this study is quantitative and deductive. The considered period is six years between the years 2014 and 2020.