Sustainability Reporting and Corporate Performance of Quoted Companies in Nigeria

The study investigated the effect of sustainability reporting on the corporate performance of companies quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The measures for corporate performance used in the study are profit margin (PM) and market value indicated by share price (SP). The three dimensions of sustainability reporting examined are namely; economic, social, and environmental disclosures. The ex-post factor research design was employed and after filtering the population of listed companies, a sample of 70 listed companies drawn from oil and gas, telecommunication, and manufacturing industries in Nigeria with complete and comprehensive data for the period under review (2010-2019) was used for the study. A series of preliminary analyses such as descriptive statistics, correlation, and multicollinearity analysis were first conducted. Next, the panel co-integration test was conducted to examine the presence of a longrun relationship between the variables, and then finally the panel regression was conducted to examine the relationship between sustainability reporting and corporate performance. The findings of the study revealed that (i) Economic performance disclosure and social performance disclosure have a significant positive effect on the net profit margin of companies listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange (ii) Environmental performance disclosure has no significant effect on the net profit margin of companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, (iii) Economic performance disclosure and social performance disclosure has a significant positive effect on the market value of companies listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange, (iv) Environmental performance disclosure has no significant effect on market value of companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange The study recommends that environmental disclosures have been lagging critically behind economic and social disclosure, thus companies need to pay more attention to addressing and disclosing on their environment. The study also recommends that there should be some regulation on environmental disclosures by the government for companies in Nigeria and companies should endeavour to improve not just economic disclosures but the quality of these disclosures.