The Moderating Effect of the Firm Life Cycle Stages on the relationship between ICS Material Weaknesses in the and Modification of the Auditor's opinion regarding Going Concern of Non-financial Companies Listed on The Egyptian Stock Exchange

The research aims to study and test the impact of Firm Life Cycle Stages on the relationship between Material Weaknesses in the Internal Control Structure )ICS( and Modification of the Auditor's opinion regarding Going Concern. With application to a Sample of non-financial companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange, which amounted to (74) companies during the period from 2017 to 2019.
The results of Fundamental Analysis concluded the existence of positive significant effect of the Material Weaknesses in the Internal Control Structure on Modification of the Auditor's opinion regarding Going Concern. And this relationship varies with the different stages of the Firm’s life cycle as a modified variable on this relationship. The results of the study indicated that the company entering the stages of introduction and declining has a positive significant affect on the modification of the auditor’s opinion regarding Going Concern, while the company entering the stages of the growth and maturity has a negative significant affect on the modification of the auditor’s opinion regarding Going Concern. This means that the company entering the introduction and declining stages makes it more likely to obtain a modified opinion on Going Concern to a greater degree than it enters the growth and maturity stages. There is also a significant effect of the interactive impact of the Firm Life Cycle Stages and the Material weaknesses in the internal control structure on modifying the auditor's opinion regarding Going Concern. The results also indicated the significant effect of each of; the size of the company, the age of the company, the financial leverage, and Nonsignificant Effect of the size of the accounting and auditing firm as control variables, on modifying the auditor’s opinion regarding Going Concern.   
As for the results of Additional Analysis, the study concluded that, the preference of adopting the modified variables approach, compared with the control variables approach, as well as the Nonsignificant effect of the control variable that was added, which is the company’s realization of losses, on modifying the Auditor's opinion regarding Going Concern. The results of the additional analyzes of using alternative measures to classify Firm Life Cycle Stages showed a significant impact on modifying the auditor's opinion regarding Going Concern, which means that there is a difference in the auditor's modified opinion regarding Going Concern across the stages of the Firm Life Cycle. This indicates the accuracy and integrity of the results obtained at the stage of the Fundamental Analysis of the research.