The Effect of Financial Leverage on the Delay In the Audit Report With The Company's Profitability as a Moderation Variable

The research aims to measure the effect of financial leverage on the delay in the audit report, with company profitability as a moderation variable for industrial companies listed on the Iraq Stock Exchange. The research sample represented 100 industrial companies listed on the Iraq Stock Exchange from 2011 to 2020. For the purpose of achieving the research objectives, a model was used. To measure the financial leverage and profitability of the company based on financial ratios, while the delay in the audit report was measured by the number of days between the end of the year and the date of issuance of the audit report. The research reached a set of results, the most important of which is that there is a statistically significant effect between financial leverage and the delay of the audit report, in addition to that, there is a statistically significant effect between financial leverage on the delay of the audit report through the interactive role of the company’s profitability.