Intangible assets disclosure by Polish enterprises

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of intangible assets of Polish companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange included in the WIG-30 index. Using publicly available data (financial statements), 30 stock listed entities were studied for the years 2010–2014 in terms of: share of intangible assets in total assets (total and by industry), direction and dynamics of changes in their value, and types of intangible assets most frequently disclosed in the reports. Tools of descriptive statistics were used in the analysis. During the analyzed period both intangible assets and tangible assets showed a positive growth dynamics, whereas the growth of tangibles value showed greater dynamics. The reported share of intangibles in total assets was relatively small, ranging from 6.3% in 2010 to 9.0% in 2014. The value of intangible assets is strongly dependent upon the industry. The intangibles most often disclosed in the financial statements were: goodwill, royalties, patents, trademarks and costs of research respectively.