Financial Benchmarking of Telecommunications Companies

Abstract

Th aim of t h s paper is to evaluate t h financial performance of telecommunications companies with t hh elp self-organising maps. A total of 88 companies is evaluated andbenchj,E3H on th basis of seven key ratios, calculated for five consecutive years 1995-99. To conduct benchj9Hw9, with several financial key figures in ach98R@, business environment is difficult and time consuming for today's managers and th re exists a need for an easy and quick tool to accomplish th is task. Furth,H ore, financial analysts and executives need efficient tools for th eir work to make comparisons and to trace company performance over time. In thj study, wehH9 collected financial data fromth Internet and used selforganising maps, a form of neural networks, to analyse telecommunication companies' financial performance. Th self-organising mapmeth@ turned out to be a good analysing, clustering and visualising tool for depicting patterns and company movements overth years, withP t h business line of telecommunications companies. Ke ets