Debt and financial performance of SMEs: the missing role of debt maturity structure

Abstract

This paper focuses on an important issue, which has generally received less attention in SMEs literature, being the effect of debt maturity structure on financial performance. The random effects model, as a panel data technique, is used to examine the relationship between debt and various measures of financial performance. The results reveal that it is not the level of leverage that determines financial performance, but rather the debt maturity structure. Specifically, the findings demonstrate that short-term debt and long-term debt have an opposite effect on financial performance and therefore tend to cancel out. This is the first study, to the best of knowledge, which offers empirical evidence regarding debt maturity structure not only in SMEs context, but also from an Egyptian perspective.