Banca de DEFESA: VANESSA RODRIGUES DOS SANTOS CARDOSO

FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH THE RISK AND RETURN OF REGULATED INFRASTRUCTURE COMPANIES

Regulatory Risk. Systematic risk. Economic Regulation. Accounting Regulation. Regulated infrastructure companies. 

Regulated companies in the infrastructure sectors are economically characterized as natural monopolies and therefore have their prices, revenues or rates of return defined by a regulatory agency, which is reflected in the risks and returns perceived by shareholders. Furthermore, they are subject to accounting regulation, with simultaneous repercussions given their specific characteristics and the differentiated business environment in which such companies are inserted. This thesis aims to analyze factors associated with the risk and return of regulated infrastructure companies. To this end, three articles were developed. The first article carried out a systematic literature review aiming to identify the concept and sources of regulatory risks, examining the existing literature on the relationship between regulatory risk and return in regulated infrastructure companies. The results revealed a lack of consensus on the concept and sources of regulatory risk; as well as the methodology for its disclosure. The most researched countries have been the United States and the United Kingdom, with few studies that go beyond this axis, especially those that address emerging countries. The second article examined the association between economic regulation regimes and regulatory environment and the systematic risk of regulated infrastructure companies. Systematic risk is a component present in the most common return on equity pricing models, being a source of information on the sensitivity of the business to market risk for entities interested in the performance of returns and the cost of capital of these companies. The results indicated that regulatory regimes with greater power to encourage efficiency and business environments with higher regulatory quality are associated with lower systematic risks; environments more favorable to competition are associated with greater systematic risks. The third article focused on accounting regulation on regulated infrastructure companies in view of the peculiar characteristic of intensive need for capital investments and international standards on concession assets. The objective of the third article was to analyze the relationship between the informativeness of accounting assets, which is a measure of the quality of accounting information, and the systematic risk of regulated companies after the mandatory adoption of international accounting standards in Brazil. The study showed that the informativeness of the accounting assets of regulated infrastructure companies during the period in which international accounting standards are in force is associated with a reduction in systematic risk.