The Impact of the Covid-19 Outbreak on the Stock Value of Food Companies: Case Study of the Tehran Stock Exchange- Iran

In addition to imposing a negative impact on public health, Covid-19 has made the world face a huge financial-economic crisis. The worldwide spread of the coronavirus has also affected the volume of transactions and the value of stocks. Since the food market is more affected under crisis conditions, this relationship has been investigated in the stock exchange in the present study. In order to investigate the effect of Covid-19 patients on the stock index value of food industry companies as well as the relationship between risk and stock index value, the official daily data of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education and the Financial Information Processing Center of Iran were collected from March 3, 2021 when the first report was announced, to June 2, 2021. Mean Conditional heteroscedasticityvariance regression models were used in the current study. The statistical model specification tests showed that, first, the assumption of heteroscedasticitywas rejected and the needto useheteroscedasticitymodels was proved. Secondly, the asymmetry assumption was accepted. Model estimation results showed a relationship between the numbers of Covid-19 patients with the stock value of the food industry that was an increase in the number of infected people causes a decrease in the stock value of the food industry. Therefore, like other economic sectors, the capital market was affected by the Covid-19 crisis, and increasing exchange rate as a competing market had a negative effect on the stock price index. Also, considering the relationship between risk and stock value of food industries, as expected, there was an inverse and significant relationship between risk and stock value of food industry companies. In other words, an increase in risk leads to a decrease in the stock price of food industries.