Effect of Corporate Sustainability on Excess Stock Returns and Profitability

The issues of sustainable development and the concept of corporate social responsibility are a vital issue at the level of global companies. Sustainability is of particular importance in developing countries such as Iran. Due to little research in this area, Attention to this topic leads to sustainable development of the country in the long run. Hence, recognizing and evaluating the effect of sustainability on stock return surplus and profitability of cement companies as a research objective can help to direct the resources and thoughts of investors and policy makers. To test the hypotheses, a sample of 14 companies was selected by systematic elimination from the Listed cement companies of Tehran Stock Exchange during the period of 2007-2016. To measure the level of disclosure of sustainability, the content analysis of the annual reports of the board has been used. Also, for analyzing the data and testing the hypotheses, the multivariate regression model was used by the combination data method. The results of the estimation of research models show that the effect of sustainability and disclosure at the level of socioeconomic performance of the company on the surplus of stock returns is inversely significant. Also, the effect of sustainability performance and disclosure level of socioeconomic performance of the company on profitability is not meaningful.