Birgit Zauner

The Impact of Goodwill Accounting on Financial Performance Metrics: an Analysis in the Internet Economy Birgit Zauner

10 years after the dot-com bubble, the Internet branch is booming again. Companies such as DangDang and Youku performed their IPO in 2010. In 2012 Facebook announced their IPO, the largest of a high tech company in history. Therefore, the branch is once again in the focus of investors. Among several other factors, performance metrics are used to evaluate the profitability of a company in order to be able to make adequate investment decisions. The balance sheet structure and therefore also performance metrics of an Internet company differ from a traditional business. Most of them show high cash and cash equivalents, financial investments and intangible assets, especially goodwill, within their balance sheets. This thesis analysis what impact the value ?goodwill? has on financial performance metrics in the Internet branch. Therefore, the correlation between performance metrics and the share price is evaluated for Internet and Internet-related companies in the NASDAQ 100.