INVESTIGATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DIGITALIZATION AND VALUATION OF GLOBAL LOGISTICS COMPANIES

Abstract

We are trying to explore and analyze the possible relationship between digitalization and the valuation of global logistics companies. We focus on the top 70 global logistics companies listed on reputable stock exchanges around the world by market value and go through their annual reports and audited financial accounts with a view to create an insight on their level of digitalization. We observe that there is an obvious increase in attention to digitalization by the logistics service providers throughout the world over the last decade. While we are not in the position to prove a causal relationship between digitalization and valuation, we find that an increase in digitalization awareness is strongly related to growth in both financial performance and market valuation in the logistics industry, especially during the recent disrupting period caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It seems that investors across different major capital markets, from New York to London, Frankfurt to Tokyo, Hong Kong to Shanghai, are willing to reward digitalization efforts made by a logistics company in the form of both higher absolute value and rate of increase of market capitalization.