The Value Relevance of Recognized Intangible Assets and Market Value Added of Listed Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria

This study examines whether recognized intangible assets are value-relevant to the market valuation of listed deposit money banks in Nigeria. The study adopts an ex-post facto panel research design and uses secondary data from the audited annual reports of 13 sampled listed deposit money banks for 2015–2024, producing 130 bank-year observations. The study is anchored principally on the Ohlson (1995) equity valuation framework and complemented by the Resource-Based View and Signaling Theory. Recognized intangible assets are measured as the natural logarithm of total recognized intangible assets, while Market Value Added (MVA) is measured as market capitalization less book value of equity. Bank size and leverage are included as control variables. Based on the regression estimates supplied for the study, the Hausman specification test does not reject the random-effects specification (χ² = 2.6133, p = 0.4552). The random-effects estimates show a positive and statistically significant association between recognized intangible assets and MVA (β = 3.1850, p < 0.001). Bank size is negatively associated with MVA (β = −2.7142, p < 0.001), whereas leverage is positively associated with MVA (β = 6.8551, p = 0.0003). The model explains approximately 60.24% of the variation in MVA (R² = 0.6024). The findings indicate that recognized intangible assets contain information associated with equity-market valuation in the sampled Nigerian banks. The results should, however, be interpreted as conditional statistical associations rather than evidence of causality. The study recommends clearer and more consistent reporting of recognized intangible assets and related accounting policies, while recognizing that IAS 38 places important limits on the recognition of internally generated intangible resources.

Recognized Intangible Assets; Market Value Added; Value Relevance; Deposit Money Banks; Ohlson Model; Panel Data.

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