Weak market infrastructure makes the data provided by Ukrainian stock exchanges obscure and unreliable, which ultimately led to a loss of Ukraine’s “frontier market” status since 2015. This, in turn, makes risk exposure estimation of Ukrainian enterprises, especially using CAPM and its modifications, a rather complex and creative process, which is highly dependent on qualifications of the expert making such assessment. The aims of this research are to itemize the main issues with calculating beta-coefficient using Ukrainian data and to offer possible ways of mitigating or avoiding them.
Using a set of Ukrainian engineering enterprises the author demonstrates the main limitations of the current statistics provided by Ukrainian stock exchange (namely, fragmentary data with dubious representativeness), gives a condensed characterization of reasons for such state of affairs, and proposes to use methods of calculation based on open source corporate data instead. The best results were achieved by using a method based on adjusting existing average industry-based beta coefficient to enterprise's individual leverage. The author hypothesizes that in order to receive results more representative for Ukraine’s situation one should use industry average beta, calculated based on Ukrainian data instead of worldwide averages, available in the open sources.
The methodical approaches to calculating beta coefficient, examined in this paper, and their modifications in order to fit Ukrainian conditions better, could potentially be used in order to access risk exposure of enterprises, functioning on other frontier or developing markets. Creating an open database of industry-based average betas, calculated on the basis of Ukrainian data, could be a valuable alternative to currently available sources for evaluating assets on non-developed markets.
This publication is a part of scientific research project “Financial risks of doing business in Ukraine: non-financial corporations sector” (state registration №0118U006088).

Ключові слова:CAPM, beta-coefficient, frontier market; stock price; ROE

Lending in Ukraine is usually studied from the creditor’s perspective, and based on the macroeconomic-level data, due to statistics availability. This potentially leaves out the problems that exist on microeconomic level, and leads to one-sided conclusions regarding, for instance, justification for certain levels of cost of credit based exclusively on minimal required profitability. In order to complement these conclusions, it is expedient to use microeconomic data-based analysis performed on a representative selection of firms, and thus the aim of this study is to evaluate credit availability for large firms in Ukraine in 2006-2020.
Within the framework of the designated aim, liabilities structure, expected costs of financial resources, both credit and equity-based, have been analyzed for a selection of firms, and then compared to their respective profitability ratios. The main conclusion is that an average large industrial firm in Ukraine in 2006-2020 was not profitable enough to attract either loans or investments on market terms, and it is unlikely the situation has changed now. Individual firms, mainly of agricultural, mining, mechanical engineering, food and trade industries, are the exception to this rule. The reason for this is abnormally high profitability volatility, and in many cases – loss-making of large industrial firms, which in turn raise their risks (and thus the cost of financial resources for them); in other words, an average industrial firm has to pay elevated cost for credit due to its low creditworthiness.
The practical conclusion is that the average large industrial firm in Ukraine is maladapted to market-based economy, and thus they should not be the centerpiece for planning of an economic development policy. Due to the tendency of such firms to bias any form of aggregated statistics in their favor, it is advisable to exclude them altogether, and aim to use representative selections based on medium and small firms instead. In particular, such approach must be used for aggregation of industry-specific capital structure, as well as for evaluation of costs of credit, equity and of their underlying risks. This would allow for setting a better scale in estimation of costs of financial resources.

Ключові слова:loans, trade credit, cost of capital, cost of credit, return on capital