Investigating the Capital Structure and its impact on stock returns of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange

Nowadays, the credit rating of companies depends largely on the structure of their capital. The capital structure is a combination of debt and equity of shareholders which thereby the company finances long-term assets. Return on equity is the rate of return on investment in the purchase of the shares and the portion of earning that will be distributed to the shareholders (dividend yields). The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between debt in the capital structure and the stock returns. For this purpose, the research library process is used and required data to test the hypothesis is collected from the reports published by the Tehran Stock Exchange. With regard to the presented issue and with using panel data for 42 non-financial listed firms in Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2007-2012, we address the relationship between the stock return and capital structure. The results state that financial leverage has a significant positive correlation with stock returns. Moreover, operating leverage has not any significant relation with stock return. Furthermore, the findings confirm significant relationships between debt ratio and stock return and also equity ratio and stock return.