Strategic Financial Performance Evaluation of the Iranian Automotive Industry Using Imperialist Competitive Algorithm

Purpose. This paper evaluates strategic financial performance of 10 Iranian stock exchange listed automotive companies over the period 2005-2009 at the hand of value-creating performance indicators and the Free Cash Flow derived value indicators. Design. To this effect, profiting from the Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA), the understudy companies were assigned to three clusters in terms of debt structure, firm size, and growth opportunities Findings . The results, in general, indicate a significant correlation between value-based indicators Economic Value Added (EVA) and True Value Added (TVA) and the FCF-derived indicators Created Value from Free Cash Flow to Firm (CVFCFF) and Created Value from Free Cash Flow to Equity (CVFCFE), and between Market Value Added (MVA) and CVFCFF (one of the two FCF-derived indicators), while, according to the results, there is no significant correlation between the value-driven performance indicators Refined Economic Value Added (REVA) and Equity Economic Value Added (EEVA) and either of the FCF-derived indicators CVFCFF and CVFCFE. Originality. Present Paper, by company clustering in ICA environment, the companies are clustered based on their close similarity in all three criteria and subsequently for examination of each strategic performance indicator were subjected to correlation and Fisher (F) tests.