Influence of Business Life Cycle Stages (Blcs) on Cash Value Added (Cva) of Listed Manufacturing Firms in Nigeria

The management of working capital is one of the most challenging issues for financial managers as the success or otherwise for business depends largely on it. Despite various researches on firm performance, the life cycle of an average firm in relation to differences in performance has not been sufficiently examined in previous studies. Hence, the present study examined the influence of business life cycle stages on cash value added of listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria. Ex Post facto research design involving annual reports of sampled firms were used in the study. The population consists of 56 manufacturing firms from which 20 were purposively selected for the study. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the study variables at each stage of business life cycle, and inferential statistics in the form of composite scoring was performed to segregate the sample firms into various stages of life cycles. Panel data regression was employed to analyze the Influence of different stages of Business Life Cycle (BLC) on Cash Value Added (CVA) of sampled firms over twelve year’s period (2014–2025). All hypotheses were tested at 5% level of significance. The result of panel regression revealed that RAGS, MATS and SIZ have positive and significant effect on CVA respectively (β=1.966165, t=4.18, p=0.000, β=.0956431, t=3.82, p=0.000, β=1.8624, t=6.39, p=0.000), while DECS have negative and significant influence on CVA (β=.0480644, t=-2.18, p=0.029). The study concluded that business life cycle stages significantly influence cash value added of listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The study recommends that managers of manufacturing firms should avoid heavy, high-interest debt loans during introduction stage, mitigate the risk of overtrading during the rapid stage, focus on maximizing free cash flow generation during the maturity stage, and cease all heavy marketing or new capital expenditure campaign during the decline stage.