Stock price development of fish farming companies : which variables have an impact on the stock price of companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange?

Abstract

The purpose of our paper is to identify how different variables have an impact on the share price of the fish farming companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. In other words, we look at how changes in these variables are reflected in the individual share price of each company. In order to examine this relationship, we have decided to use a time series analysis where the dividend-adjusted share price of each respective fish farming company is the dependent variable. The independent variables are the global harvest volumes of salmon, the NASDAQ salmon price, the EUR/NOK and USD/NOK currency exchange rates and finally the Oslo Stock Exchange Benchmark Index, OSEBX. Our analysis is based on monthly data for each of these variables from January 2009 to September 2020. We decided to include 2020 as we believe it would be interesting to examine the impact of COVID-19 on the variables and consequently the stock price of each fish farming company. Considering we only had monthly observations for all variables, we did not split our data into two time periods as we believe it would require substantially more observations to obtain an accurate analysis. In our analysis we found that there was a positive statistically significant relationship between the salmon price and share prices of Mowi, Norway Royal Salmon and Bakkafrost. Our findings are likely of interest to investors seeking either a high or low exposure to the salmon price. The results also suggested that there was a negative statistically significant relationship between the global harvest volume and the share price of each company, except for Norway Royal Salmon. However, the results varied for some companies for different lags. Surprisingly, the results also suggested there were no statistical significance between the share price of the fish farming companies and the EUR/NOK and USD/NOK exchange rates, except for Salmar. This result was quite surprising considering an appreciation of the EUR against the NOK should, all else equal, lead to an increase in the salmon price due to an increase in foreign demand, and consequently an increase in the revenues of the fish farming companies. A reason for why there was no statistical significance could possibly be due to the fish farming companies utilizing currency hedging to avoid fluctuations in their revenues.