The Impact of Commodity Price Risk on Firm Value - An Empirical Analysis of Corporate Commodity Price Exposures

Commodity prices are more volatile than exchange rates and interest rates. Hence, a priori, commodity price risk represents a more important source of risk to corporations. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the economic commodity price exposure of a large sample of nonfinancial firms. The results indicate that corporations exhibit net exposures with regard to several commodity prices. Even though commodity prices are highly volatile, commodity price risk is, however, not found to be of greater importance than other financial risks. The results are consistent with few cash flows being affected by commodity price movements, and with corporate hedging of commodity price risk