ANALYZING THE FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF AUTOMOTIVE COMPANIES BEFORE AND AFTER INDUSTRY 4.0: AN APPLICATION IN THE BIST SUSTAINABILITY INDEX

Today, the "Industry 4.0 revolution", which offers opportunities such as a substantial competitive advantage, increase in production capacity, and cost reduction, is preparing to move institutions to a rapidly changing information age. Therefore, the importance of keeping up with innovations and providing sustainable performance is increasing for businesses in this age. On the other hand, it draws the attention of researchers to whether there is a difference between the financial performances of companies before-after industry 4.0. The study compares the financial performances of automotive companies that have adopted Industry 4.0 methods in the BIST Sustainability Index, before and after Industry 4.0. For this purpose, the companies' financial performances were analyzed and compared between 2013-2015 and 2016-2018 with the Gray Relational Analysis method, one of the multi-criteria decision-making techniques. The entropy which is an objective method, was preferred for weighting the criteria. Ten financial ratios were used as criteria in the performance evaluation. As a result, almost all companies increase their financial performance, but a decrease occurs only in one company's financial performance with the transition to Industry 4.0. So it can be stated that the increase in the share of R&D expenditures and Industry 4.0 investments will positively affect the financial performance of companies.