The role of corporate governance in meeting or beating analysts’ forecast

Meeting or beating analysts’ forecasts is a topic of considerable interest in the academic and business communities. Some studies indicate a favorable market response when firms meet or beat analysts’ earnings forecasts, but others suggest managers opportunistically manage earnings to achieve earnings targets. We investigate the relation between corporate governance mechanisms and meeting or exceeding analysts’ expectations and find that attributes of corporate governance are related to the likelihood of consistently meeting or exceeding consensus forecasts. We extend current literature by showing that some attributes of strong corporate governance mechanisms lower agency costs associated with consistently meeting or beating analysts’ expectations. We also find that compensation committees reward managers for consistently meeting or beating analysts’ forecasts.     

Corporate investment and earnings surprises

ABSTRACT

We find that firm-level investment is negatively related to the likelihood of meeting or beating analysts’ short-term EPS forecasts. In a 35-year panel dataset of US based companies, we find evidence that suggests firms with the best growth opportunities, opaque firms, and firms with higher than usual bonus compensation, are the ones to alter investment in order to beat benchmarks. Utilizing the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley as a natural experiment we find that firms trade off accruals-based earnings management in lieu of investment cuts. Results are robust to a number of covariates, and endogeneity or reverse causality does not seem to drive our inferences. This study suggests that, consistent with survey results from Graham, Harvey, and Rajgopal [2005. “The Economic Implications of Corporate Financial Reporting.” Journal of Accounting and Economics 40: 3–73], managers may reduce or delay corporate investment to meet or beat short-term earnings benchmarks.     

Meeting or Missing Earnings Benchmarks: The Role of CEO Integrity

This paper examines the role of CEO integrity in determining whether a company's earnings benchmarks will be met, beaten or missed. Prior literature provides evidence that managers have incentives for meeting or beating earnings benchmarks and are rewarded by the market for doing so (Lopez and Rees, 2002; and Skinner and Sloan, 2002). Managers also have incentives to miss their earnings targets for the benefit of a lower strike price on subsequent option grants (McAnally et al., 2008). A CEO's involvement in backdating is taken here as a measure of his or her integrity. This paper shows that CEO integrity significantly influences whether benchmarks are met or beaten. In other words, backdating CEOs are more likely to meet or narrowly beat all three earnings benchmarks examined in the paper: positive earnings, last year's earnings and analysts’ forecasts. At the same time, they are also less likely to narrowly miss a zero‐earnings benchmark. The results presented in this paper further validate the use of benchmark meeting/beating as a measure of earnings manipulation.     

The use of advertising activities to meet earnings benchmarks: evidence from monthly data

Using a unique database of monthly media advertising spending, we examine whether managers engage in real earnings management to meet quarterly financial reporting benchmarks. We extend prior literature by (1) separately analyzing advertising activities, allowing us to explore the possibility that managers could reduce or boost advertising to meet benchmarks; (2) analyzing actual activities as opposed to inferring them from reported expenses, which are also subject to accrual choices; (3) investigating the timing, within a quarter, of altered advertising spending; and (4) examining quarterly earnings benchmarks. We find that managers, on average, reduce advertising spending to avoid losses and earnings decreases. However, we also report that firms in the late stages of their life cycle increase advertising to meet earnings benchmarks. Finally, we find some evidence that firms increase advertising in the third month of a fiscal quarter and in the fourth quarter to beat prior year’s earnings.     

Institutional investor type,earnings management and benchmark beaters

This paper classifies institutional investors into transient or long-term by their investment horizons to examine the association between institutional investor type and firms’ discretionary earnings management strategies in two mutually exclusive settings – firms that (do not) use accruals to meet/beat earnings targets. The results support the view that long-term institutional investors constrain accruals management among firms that manage earnings to meet/beat earnings benchmarks. This suggests long-term institutional investors can mitigate aggressive earnings management among these firms. Transient institutional ownership is not systematically associated with aggressive earnings management and is evident only among firms that manage earnings to meet/beat their earnings benchmarks. This indicates transient institution-associated managerial myopia may not be as prevalent as posited by critics. This study highlights the importance of explicitly considering the type of institutional investor and the specific setting when investigating the association between institutional ownership and corporate earnings management.     

Discretion in bank loan loss allowance,risk taking and earnings management

We study whether banks use the allowance for loan losses (ALL) for efficiency or for opportunistic reasons. We find that banks that had higher abnormal ALL during the period prior to the 2007–2009 crisis engaged in less risk taking during the pre‐crisis period and had a lower probability of failure during the crisis period. In testing earnings management to meet or beat earnings benchmarks, we find that abnormal ALL is unrelated to next period's loss avoidance and just meeting or beating the prior year's earnings. Our results suggest that banks use ALL for efficiency and not for opportunistic purposes.     

Shifting corporate culture: executive stock ownership plan adoptions and incentives to meet or just beat analysts’ expectations

This paper investigates whether adoptions of executive stock ownership plans coincide with decreased incentives to meet or just beat analysts’ near-term EPS forecasts. Firms often assert that ownership plans focus executives on long-term performance. I find that the impact of these adoptions on meeting or just beating analysts’ EPS forecasts differs depending on whether the plan binds the CEO to reach ownership targets by a specified date. In particular, I find that firms that adopt plans requiring an increase in CEO ownership exhibit a lower propensity to meet or just beat earnings forecasts following plan adoptions. In contrast, firms that adopt plans that require no increase exhibit no change in the propensity to meet or just beat. The results suggest that firms use binding ownership plans to shift executives’ focus from near-term earnings benchmarks to long-term value creation.     

The impact of abnormal real earnings management to meet earnings benchmarks on future operating performance

Motivated by agency conflicts of real earnings management (e.g., opportunistic and signalling perspectives), this study investigates the association between firms that manipulate their business operations to meet earnings benchmarks (i.e., zero earnings, last year's earnings) and subsequent operating performance. We examine the effects of the magnitude of real earnings management on firms' future performance for the period 2009 to 2015 for UK firms. Our analysis shows that the manipulation of operating activities such as sales, discretionary expenditures, and production costs to meet earnings benchmarks has a significantly positive consequence for firms' subsequent operating performance and signals firms' good future performance. We also find that firms that manipulate their operating activities in the absence of meeting earnings benchmarks experience a decline in their subsequent operating performance. The findings of this research lend support to our understanding of the process that management follows to evaluate costs and benefits of real earnings management.     

Earnings management strategies for meeting or beating expectations

In this study, we dispel several popular notions regarding the meeting or beating expectations/thresholds (MBE) phenomenon that permeates the research design of many empirical papers. First, MBE is not unequivocally associated with aggressive earnings management. Second, MBE does not necessarily obfuscate the truth. Third, MBE may be consistent with the well-documented reporting strategy of smoothing. Specifically, we characterize the reporting strategy of firms that engage in MBE in a two-period game. Some firms value MBE in the first period more than in the second (short-run firms), and other firms are less concerned with missing a threshold in the first period but must meet or beat expectations in the second (long-run firms). The analysis yields additional insights: we also show that MBE, by a small amount, is driven by the demand for a truth-revealing report, since the extremely small margin is designed to vary with the truth. In addition, MBE explains the richness of the menu of reporting strategies (“taking a bath,” “cookie-jar reserve,” and marginal threshold beating). Moreover, MBE is good news when the firm is a long-run MBE firm because it signals that the firm will also meet or beat expectations in the future. Finally, MBE has a favorable economic effect, as it induces boards of directors to incentivize managers to expend more effort.     

The impact of meeting or beating analysts' operating cash flow forecasts on a firm's cost of debt

Extant literature provides conflicting results with respect to the usefulness and accuracy of analysts' operating cash flow forecasts. Our study empirically examines the importance and influence of meeting or beating analysts' operating cash flow forecasts on a firm's cost of debt. Results indicate that firms meeting/beating analysts' cash flow forecasts have higher initial bond ratings as well as lower initial bond yields. Additionally, based upon an analysis of rating changes, firms meeting or beating cash flow forecasts have a higher probability of receiving a debt rating upgrade and a lower probability of a ratings downgrade compared to firms missing cash flow forecasts. A direct comparison of the importance of meeting/beating cash flow versus earnings benchmarks indicates that debt market participants appear to incrementally value both types of forecasts, and contrary to selected equity market findings, neither forecast subsumes the other for debt market participants.     

Overvalued equity,benchmark beating and unexpected accruals

We investigate the extent to which the overvaluation hypothesis provides incentives for managers to beat earnings benchmarks, and whether this benchmark beating can be reliably interpreted as evidence of earnings management. We carefully identify firms immediately above earnings benchmarks that have a priori, overvaluation‐based incentives to achieve the benchmark. We therefore focus on benchmark‐beating observations where manipulation is most likely, providing a more powerful test of the existence of opportunistic financial reporting. Consistent with overvaluation‐related incentives encouraging earnings management, we find that overvalued firms that just exceed levels‐related earnings benchmarks have higher unexpected accruals than firms with less extreme valuations.     

Qualitative audit materiality and earnings management

This study investigates auditors’ propensity to rely on quantitative materiality thresholds to the exclusion of qualitative materiality thresholds. Specifically, we examine whether auditors are more likely to allow earnings management that is less than typical quantitative materiality thresholds but that nonetheless is qualitatively material. We use changes in tax expense as a proxy for earnings management. Our results indicate that companies with pre-managed earnings that would have missed the consensus analyst forecast are more likely to decrease their tax expense when the magnitude of the decrease is less than quantitative audit materiality thresholds. The results also indicate that firms are more likely to meet or beat the forecast when the amount of earnings management necessary to meet the analyst forecast is less than quantitative materiality. These results are consistent with auditors relying on quantitative materiality thresholds to the exclusion of qualitative materiality thresholds, i.e., the importance of meeting or beating the analyst forecast. Finally, we find that the ability to use tax expense reduction within quantitative materiality to meet or beat analysts’ consensus forecasts was significantly reduced by the SEC’s guidance on materiality in SAB-99 and by the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act.     

The rewards to meeting or beating earnings expectations

This paper finds that firms that meet or beat current analysts’ earnings expectations (MBE) enjoy a higher return over the quarter than firms with similar quarterly earnings forecast errors that fail to meet these expectations. Further, such a premium to MBE, although somewhat smaller, exists in the cases where MBE is likely to have been achieved through earnings or expectations management. The findings also indicate that the premium to MBE is a leading indicator of future performance. This premium and its predictive ability are only marginally affected by whether the MBE is genuine or the result of earnings or expectations management.     

The effects of corporate name changes on firm information environment and earnings management

We study how corporate name changes affect a firm's information environment and its earnings management. We show that the stock market reacts negatively to name changes. This effect is specifically pronounced for firms that have lower visibility. We also find that firms that change their names tend to have a relatively worse information environment. Finally, we show that earnings management is positively related to firm name changes.     

Management of operating cash flows before and after the scandals in the early 2000s: An examination of meeting or beating analyst cash flow forecasts*

We examine whether the stock market premium assigned to meeting or beating analyst estimates of cash flows from operations (hereafter, “CFO”) has changed after the publicized accounting scandals in the early 2000 s (“post-scandals period”). We also examine whether firms’ CFO management behavior associated with meeting or beating analyst CFO forecasts has changed after the scandals. We find that the market reward for firms that meet or just beat analyst CFO forecasts (“small beaters”) has increased in the post-scandals period, especially when the accuracy of CFO forecasts is relatively high. We also find that the extent of CFO management engaged in by small beaters has increased after the accounting scandals and that these firms appear to resort to the timing of CFO. Further, we find evidence that the “underpricing” of CFO is weaker in the post-scandals period that exhibits a greater extent of CFO management than before, suggesting that the reduction in the underpricing of CFO in the post-scandals period is at least partially due to CFO management. Overall, our findings suggest that firms responded to the rising importance of cash flow information after a series of accounting scandals by inflating reported CFO to a larger extent than they did before.     

The relation between earnings management and financial statement fraud

This paper provides new evidence on the characteristics of firms that commit financial statement fraud. We examine how previous earnings management impacts the likelihood that a firm will commit financial statement fraud and in doing so develop three new fraud predictors. Using a sample of 54 fraud and 54 non-fraud firms, we find that fraud firms are more likely to have managed earnings in prior years and that earnings management in prior years is associated with a higher likelihood that firms that meet or beat analyst forecasts or that inflate revenue are committing fraud. We further find that fraud firms are more likely to meet or beat analyst forecasts and inflate revenue than non-fraud firms are even when there is no evidence of prior earnings management. This paper contributes to the fraud detection literature and the earnings management literature, and can help practitioners and regulators develop better fraud detection models.     

Causal language intensity in performance commentary and financial analyst behaviour

We use automated techniques to measure causal reasoning on earnings‐related financial outcomes of a large sample of MD&A sections of US firms and examine the intensity of causal language in that context against extent of analyst following and against properties of analysts’ earnings forecasts. We find a positive and significant association between a firm's causal reasoning intensity and analyst following and analyst earnings forecast accuracy respectively. Correspondingly, analysts’ earnings forecast dispersion is negatively and significantly associated with causal reasoning intensity. These results suggest that causal reasoning intensity provides incremental information about the relationship between financial performance outcomes and its causes, thereby reducing financial analysts’ information processing and interpreting costs and lowering overall analyst information uncertainty. Additionally, we find that decreases in analyst following are followed by more causal reasoning on performance disclosure. We also find that firms with a considerable increase of causal disclosure especially attract new analysts who already cover many firms. Overall, our evidence of the relationship between causal reasoning intensity and properties of analyst behaviour is consistent with the proposition that causal reasoning is a generic narrative disclosure quality characteristic, able to provide incremental information to analysts and guide analysts' behaviour.     

Does external finance pressure affect corporate disclosure of Chinese non-state-owned enterprises?

We examine whether external finance pressure influences information disclosure of Chinese non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs), which are often entrepreneurial firms. Existing Chinese stock exchange regulations stipulate that firms need to meet certain earnings performance criteria to qualify for rights issue or avoid delisting. These regulatory criteria create pressures for firms in need for external equity financing to manipulate earnings in order to meet and beat the performance targets. To examine this, we exploit an exogenous event of Chinese accounting standards change in 2007, when firms are given greater accounting disclosure discretion. Following this change, we find evidence consistent with increased earnings manipulation among NSOEs that barely meet these performance targets. This effect is also more pronounced among such NSOEs with weaker political connections, which increases their dependence on the capital market for external financing. Our findings have policy implications for the financing of NSOEs and entrepreneurial firms in emerging economies.     

The effect of capital market pressures on the association between R&;D spending and CEO option compensation

We examine the effect of capital market pressures for meeting earnings benchmarks on the relationship between R&D spending and CEO option compensation. We consider a particular scenario when firms face small earnings declines but could opportunistically reduce R&D spending to increase reported earnings. We find that firms with income reporting concerns punish their CEOs with lower option compensation when R&D spending increases but reported earnings decreases. Further, for firms with income reporting concerns, we find that the penalty for increasing R&D is greater when the firms frequently miss quarterly earnings benchmarks in the year. Overall, our findings suggest that the adverse consequence on CEO options encourages short-run compensation-motivated actions to eliminate or postpone R&D projects with positive net present values.     

Does Earnings Quality Influence Corporate Social Responsibility Performance? Empirical Evidence of the Causal Link

The study examines the causal links between earnings quality and corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance using a large sample of United States (US) firms from 1992 to 2013. We first find that the association between earnings quality and CSR performance is positive and significant. We then test the flow of causality using Granger's (1969) lead–lag analysis to determine whether changes in earnings quality cause changes in CSR performance or vice versa. Our findings show that changes in earnings quality cause changes in a firm's CSR performance but not vice versa. Further analysis shows that earnings quality reduces the cost of equity capital for firms with higher CSR performance. These findings suggest that one plausible means by which firms with higher earnings quality can maintain better CSR performance is to reduce their cost of equity capital.