Diagnosing the Financial Distress in Oil Drilling and Exploration Sector of India through Discriminant Analysis

The present study is mainly devoted to the bankruptcy prediction models and their ability to assess a bankruptcy probability for oil drilling and exploration sector of Indian. The study puts an effort to determine the financial health of 12 selected companies from this sector of India for a period of 5 years. These companies serve the backbone of many other industries such as transport industry, manufacturing industry, automobile industry and so on of the Indian economy. The study has taken the reference of Altman's Z-score model, where ratios such as working capital to total asset, retained earnings to total asset, earnings before interest and tax to total assets, market value of equity to book value of debt and sales to total assets have been taken. The discriminant analysis is conducted to validate the outcomes of Altman's model to predict group membership and to forecast the overall industry condition. The study reveals that 75 per cent of the companies are in financially healthy zone. The results indicate that working capital/total assets can very well explain the Z-score. The research on financial health using Altman's score is very limited in Indian context. Therefore, this study will add value to the existing body of literature for financial risk.