Effect of Financial Leverage on Profitability of Firms Listed in the Nairobi Securities Exchange

Abstract

Financial leverage is the use of fixed charge sources of funds to finance the firms’ investment projects. A levered firm is a firm that employs debt in its capital structure. Excessive use of debt is likely to expose the firm to financial risk hence insolvency. Therefore, a firm should maintain an optimal capital structure that will minimise the overall cost of capital. This study sought to establish the effect of financial leverage on the profitability of firms listed in the NSE. Causal research design was employed on the target population of 66 listed firms. Purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 30 listed firms. Data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics was used to test for normality of data. Inferential statistics on the data were done using regression model. The study established that, firm size has a statistically significant effect on the profitability of listed firms with p value of 0.002. Liquidity and growth opportunity on the other hand were not statistically significant indicating p values of 0.062 and 0.914 respectively. This means they have no significant effect on the profitability of firms listed in the NSE.