Mihulka O. Evaluation of the effectiveness of leasing operations.

The dissertation research is devoted to the improvement of the theoretical foundations and the development of a set of methods and models for assessing the effectiveness of leasing operations, the formation of effective methods for analyzing factors that affect the efficiency of Ukrainian leasing companies. The dissertation provides a theoretical generalization and a new solution to the scientific problem of developing methodological provisions and the corresponding system of models for assessing the effectiveness of leasing operations, analyzing factors that have a statistically significant impact on the efficiency of the functioning of leasing companies in Ukraine and improving the existing conceptual and categorical apparatus of efficiency analysis. The paper notes that leasing operations at the present stage in Ukraine are a less developed form of economic relations compared to lending. This can be explained by the existence of bottlenecks in the methodology for analyzing leasing operations, which remain insufficiently studied and illuminated. In addition, existing approaches to assessing the effectiveness of leasing operations and the leasing business as a whole do not meet the current realities of economic relations. There are also contradictory aspects of the legal regulation of the leasing business. Economic efficiency is a broader concept than profitability, since it is a more general category that characterizes the results obtained from many options for using the resources of a leasing company. Profitability is one of the forms of expression of economic efficiency. The analysis showed that the most common method for assessing the effectiveness of leasing operations, which is actively used in financial practice not only by foreign, but also by domestic leasing companies and analysts, is an approach based on assessing the effectiveness of leasing compared to a type of active operations that is close in economic essence - banking credit. It was shown that when comparing leasing transactions with the usual acquisition of property due to lending, an important factor is often not taken into account, namely, the additional profit received from the circulation of capital released due to the use of leasing, in some places leads to an underestimation of the effectiveness of leasing compared to ordinary sale and purchase transaction. The paper proposed a risk classification system for all participants in a leasing agreement, namely, lessors, lessees, creditors, sellers and an insurance company. The key risk for a financial institution involved in the leasing business is credit risk, as a leasing operation is very similar to selling secured loan products. In the dissertation research work, eight input-oriented DEA models with variable VRS and robust CRS effects of scale were developed. The use of net income from product sales, net profit and other operating income, the current liquidity ratio and receivables as input variables in DEA models made it possible to take into account the long-term nature of leasing transactions and the stability of leasing companies as a key component of their effective functioning. As input variables for all models, total assets, administrative expenses and other operating expenses, fixed assets and intangible assets, cost of goods sold and other expenses were taken. Based on the results of the CRS and VRS assessment of the performance of Ukrainian leasing companies, it was concluded that despite the high growth rates of leasing operations in the second half of 2020, the leasing business in the previous 2019 showed slightly higher efficiency. This is due to the fact that in the first half of 2020, after the introduction of quarantine, there was a sharp decline in business activity in all sectors of the economy, caused by panic before the kovydu-19 pandemic. The analysis showed that this practically did not affect the results of the work of leasing companies. Thus, 9 out of 21 companies showed an increase in the average value of CRS and VRS efficiency in 2020. In the work, input-oriented DEA models were built, since, compared to outputoriented models, they allow obtaining more correct estimates of the effectiveness of the leasing business, since the management of leasing companies has much greater opportunities to regulate the size of input resources. Performance evaluation based on the DEA methodology turned out to be sensitive to the set of input and output shift models. The paper proposed to use the average value of efficiency based on all received DEA models. Keywords: technical efficiency, scale efficiency, efficiency of leasing operations, efficiency of activity, internal rate of return, leasing payments, leasing business, DEA, SFA, stochastic frontier, rent, lease, credit.