Comparing the Value Relevance of Two Operating Income Measures

Prior research has shown that pro-forma (recurring operating) earnings reported by managers and analysts are more value relevant than GAAP net income. Since GAAP net income contains many non-operating items that reduce its value relevance compared to operating earnings, comparing the value relevance of GAAP net income with operating earnings unduly favors operating earnings. We show that operating earnings reported by managers and analysts are more value relevant than a measure of operating earnings derived from firms' financial statements, as reported by Standard and Poor's. Our evidence is important because it indicates that operating earnings reported by managers and analysts contain value relevant information beyond that provided by operating earnings obtained by sophisticated users from firms' financial statements.     

Taxation of Interest Income

Why is interest income taxed so much more heavily than other forms of capital income? This differential tax treatment has generated substantial tax arbitrage, resulting in lower tax revenue, efficiency costs, and apparently net gains to rich borrowers and net losses to poor lenders, together suggesting that this tax treatment makes no sense on welfare grounds. In examining this argument more formally, this paper reveals two omitted considerations that can help explain the existing tax treatment. First, the forecasted increase in the market interest rate results in a redistribution from rich borrowers to poor lenders. Yet this redistribution comes at no marginal efficiency cost, starting from a situation with no distortions to portfolio choice, so at the margin dominates further redistribution through the income tax. In addition, information about an individual's portfolio choice reveals information about her earnings ability, even controlling for observed labor income, if those who are more able tend to be less risk averse. By making use of this extra information about earnings ability, the tax system can be better tailored to redistribute from able to less able, for any given efficiency cost.     

Earnings Reported under IFRS Improve the Prediction of Future Cash Flows? Evidence from European Banks

This paper examines the relative costs and benefits of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption in the European Union by testing the ability of earnings computed under IFRS to predict future cash flows. The study considers the contribution of net income, comprehensive income and other comprehensive income to the usefulness of earnings to predict cash flows, and it compares IFRS with domestic Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Evidence from a sample of Continental European banks shows that IFRS improve the ability of net income to predict future cash flows. Comprehensive income, too, provides relevant information to predict future cash flows, although with a measurement error which is higher than that in net income for greater lags of time. In our interpretation, these findings are consistent with unrealised gains and losses recognised in other comprehensive income being more transitory and volatile in nature. Overall, our results are relevant to academics and standard setters debating the merits of IFRS adoption and to those who use financial statements and adopt reported earnings to form expectations about future cash flows.     

The information content of funds from operations (FFO) for real estate investment trusts (REITs)

This paper examines the information content of alternative summary performance measures, using stock returns as the benchmark, for 138 REITs during 1994–1996. This paper tests for both incremental and relative information content of FFO (a voluntarily disclosed, accounting-based performance measure that is the industry standard for REITs) compared to GAAP net income (EPS), cash from operations, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Results indicate that both FFO and EPS consistently provide incremental information content with only weak evidence that EPS has greater relative information content and no evidence for the other summary performance measures.     

综合收益披露改革与管理层盈余操纵

基于综合收益列报改革契机,考察管理层盈余管理活动的新趋势和手段.结果显示:列报改革促使企业管理层大幅度增加应计盈余管理和销售异常现金流真实盈余管理活动,以达到业绩改善,弥补净利润和其他综合收益盈余信息透明度提高所带来的损失.针对以往通过出售有价证券结转损益进行盈余管理的企业,提出应加强其应计盈余管理与真实盈余管理中异常销售活动的监督.     

The incremental information content of replacement cost earnings

The study explores the incremental explanatory power of replacement cost earnings variables (derived from ASR 190 data) with respect to explaining cross sectional differences in security returns. As such, the study is a natural extension of previous research, including analyses of the effect of security returns of ASR 190 data at the time of disclosure, investigations of cross sectional relationships between security returns and historical cost earnings, and studies of multiple signals. The basic finding is that pre-holding gain net income provides no incremental explanatory powerm given knowledge of historical cost earnings. However, the converse does not hold. Taken together, the findings are consistent with the contention that pre-holding gain net income is a garbled version of historical cost earnings. The basic finding is robust under several extensions of the initial research design. The research design incorporates a two-stage approach which permits a determination of the incremental explanatory power of collinear variables. The findings are in contrast to those of a previous study by Easman et al. (1979). The nature of the difference in research design inducing the difference is identified. Potential reasons for the difference in findings are provided.     

信息可靠性、企业成长性与会计盈余持续性

本文以我国2001至2006年期间上市公司为研究对象,延续FWY和RSST的方法,考察信息可靠性和企业成长性对应计利润持续性较差现象的解释力。我们采用经营资产利润率与经营资产现金获取率的均方差计量信息可靠性。研究发现,企业成长性越好,信息失真值越高;会计扭曲越严重,应计利润的持续性越差;信息可靠性越高(低),会计盈余持续性越高(低);应计利润和现金收益整体对下一期的会计盈余预测能力越强(弱),会计盈余持续性检验模型的解释力越高(低);应计利润较现金收益的持续性差,且这种现象不因信息可靠性高或低而改变。     

Usefulness of comprehensive income reporting in Canada

In January 2005 the Canadian Accounting Standards Board (AcSB) issued three new accounting standards that require Canadian firms to mark-to-market certain financial assets and liabilities and recognize the holding gains and losses related to these items as other comprehensive income or as part of net income. The Board’s objectives for issuing the new standards are (i) to harmonize Canadian GAAP with US and International GAAP, (ii) to enhance the transparency and usefulness of financial statements, and (iii) to keep pace with changes in accounting standards in other countries that are moving towards fair value accounting. This paper investigates empirically whether requiring Canadian companies to report comprehensive income and its components provides the securities market with incremental value-relevant information over the traditional historical-cost earnings approach.Previous empirical studies provide mixed evidence on the value relevance of other comprehensive income and its components. This mixed evidence may be attributed partially to the use of as if methodology to construct an ex-ante measure of other comprehensive income prior to the implementation of SFAS 130, which introduces measurement error. In contrast, this study uses actual data on other comprehensive income for a sample of Canadian firms cross-listed in the US in the period 1998–2003. We find evidence that available-for-sale and cash flow hedges components are significantly associated with price and market returns. We also find that aggregate comprehensive income is more strongly associated (in terms of explanatory power) with both stock price and returns compared to net income. However, we find that net income is a better predictor of future net income relative to comprehensive income. Our findings suggest that mandating all Canadian firms to adopt the new accounting standards is expected to enhance the usefulness of financial statements. Our findings, therefore, should be of interest to Canadian accounting policy makers as they provide ex-ante evidence on the potential usefulness of mandating firms to report comprehensive income and the components of other comprehensive income in their financial statements.     

The Differential Persistence of Accruals and Cash Flows for Future Operating Income versus Future Profitability

Prior research provides evidence that a higher proportion of accrued relative to cash earnings is associated with lower earnings performance in the subsequent fiscal year. The result has been widely interpreted as indicative of higher levels of operating accruals relative to cash flows foreshadowing a subsequent earnings reversal, and thus signaling earnings management. We note, however, that earnings performance in prior studies is typically defined as one-year-ahead operating income divided by one-year-ahead invested capital, or a measure of profitability. We find that accruals are more highly associated than cash flows with invested capital in the denominator of the profitability measure. In contrast, accruals and cash flows have no differential relation to one-year-ahead operating income. The evidence is not consistent with accruals having a reversal effect on earnings. This suggests that the lower persistence of accruals versus cash flows may not be due to earnings management but may rather be due to the effect of growth on future profitability.     

The nature of information in accruals and cash flows in an emerging capital market: The case of China

Our study investigates the relative and incremental information content of earnings, operating cash flows, and accruals in the emerging capital market of China. The issue is tested by regressing stock returns on the levels of earnings and their components. Based on a sample of 1516 firm-years for listed Chinese firms during 1995–1998, our results demonstrate that earnings have relative information content over operating cash flows. The autocorrelations and cross-sectional correlations also imply that earnings have greater persistence and predictability than operating cash flows. We also find that discretionary accruals provide incremental information beyond that contained in nondiscretionary accruals, consistent with the argument that discretionary accruals improve the relevance of earnings in reflecting the fundamental values of the listed Chinese firms. Unlike prior findings in the studies on developed markets, we find no strong evidence that the value attached to discretionary accruals is lower than the value attached to nondiscretionary accruals. This is consistent with the argument that managerial policy choices available for the listed Chinese firms were rather limited during our sample period under relatively uniform People's Republic of China Accounting Standards (PRC-GAAP), thus, producing fewer opportunities for earnings management. An alternative interpretation could be that Chinese investors are functionally fixated on earnings.     

其他综合收益、分析师预测与决策价值

其他综合收益作为“脏盈余”的回收站,是否对信息使用者具有决策价值是困扰准则制定者的重要学术问题,从资本市场最专业的财务报表使用者——证券分析师视角出发,研究其他综合收益对分析师盈余预测的影响,检验分析师是否能够有效识别利用其他综合收益信息.研究结果表明:其他综合收益信息对分析师盈余预测准确性有显著影响,即其他综合收益比重高的企业,分析师盈余误差的分歧越大;其他综合收益强制披露后分析师解读成本减低,盈余预测准确性得以提高.结论支持现阶段其他综合收益信息在分析师利预测中的作用,间接证明其他综合收益的决策价值.     

The Validity of the Economic Value Added Approach: an Empirical Application

This study investigates the relative explanatory power of the Economic Value Added (EVA) model with respect to stock returns and firms' market value, compared to established accounting variables (e.g. net income, operating income), in the context of a small European developing market, namely the Athens Stock Exchange, in its first market‐wide application of the EVA measure. Relative information content tests reveal that net and operating income appear to be more value relevant than EVA. Additionally, incremental information tests suggest that EVA unique components add only marginally to the information content of accounting profit. Moreover, EVA does not appear to have a stronger correlation with firms' Market Value Added than the other variables, suggesting that – for our Greek dataset – EVA, even though useful as a performance evaluation tool, need not necessarily be more correlated with shareholder's value than established accounting variables.     

中国银行业收入结构变革对收益的影响

面临混业趋势的挑战,内外竞争的压力以及市场环境的日益复杂,商业银行传统信贷业务的发展空间受到严重挤压,经营战略转型势在必行。近几年,非利息收入以其稳定收益、改善收入结构、增加多样化收益等优势,成为商业银行的必争之地。但是,非利息收入与银行收益之间的关系究竟如何,仍然是值得研究的课题。本文利用我国12家商业银行1999～2006年期间的数据对非利息收入的收益贡献进行剖析,回归结果表明非利息收入与银行资本收益率之间存在显著且稳定的负相关关系,这一结论不同于以往的观点。同时,本文结合当前现状对该结论做出经济解释,并针对问题提出相关政策建议。     

Earnings, cashflows and returns: Functional relations and the impact of firm size

The relation between stock returns, earnings and cashflows is of importance because it directly addresses the issue of whether accounting data provide value relevant information. The empirical evidence to date, however, has documented low explanatory power for earnings and inconclusive incremental information content for cashflows. This research re-evaluates the incremental information content debate using Australian data. Our research is motivated by: recent innovations in research design, including the specification of nonlinear functional relations between accounting variables and prices, and the fact that differences in firm size characteristics may influence the relative information content of the accounting variables. We observe that: (i) a nonlinear functional relation provides greater explanatory power for both earnings and cashflows;(ii) the results are consistent with more transitory earnings components for smaller firms; and (iii) contrary to received theory, cashflows add greater incremental explanatory power for large firms.     

Does financial reporting above or below operating income matter to firms and investors? The case of investment income in China

We explore a unique regulatory change in China in 2007 that moves investment income in an income statement from below the line of operating income to above the line. We find that, post-regulatory change, firms report high investment income when core earnings (operating income excluding investment income) are low and vice versa. Investment income and core earnings exhibit a significantly negative correlation every year post regulation, in contrast to a significantly positive correlation beforehand. We also find that investors do not fully see through the change. Before the regulation, both core earnings and investment income are positively correlated with contemporaneous stock returns and uncorrelated with future stock returns, suggesting appropriate pricing of the information. However, afterward, the results on core earnings are similar to those in the pre-regulation period, but investment income is negatively correlated with future stock returns, implying that the stock market overreacts to the information in investment income in the contemporaneous year.     

Sources of earnings variability and their effect on earnings forecasts

Previous research shows that analysts’ forecasts of earnings do not fully incorporate information contained in reported earnings variability. This study investigates whether the inefficient forecast is because of a failure to incorporate observable information on two components of earnings variability: variability in operating performance and income smoothing. Our results show that analysts’ forecasts fully incorporate information contained in earnings variability for firms with high income smoothing and for firms with low operating variability. A smaller serial correlation of forecast errors is observed for firms with low operating variability, which suggests that analysts recognize the permanence in earnings for such firms.     

Does reporting position affect the pricing of the volatility of comprehensive income?

The FASB changed the reporting policy for comprehensive income (CI) by issuing ASU No. 2011-05, which requires CI be reported in performance statements (i.e., either a single income statement with net income or a separate statement of CI following the income statement) rather than the previously allowed equity statements. We examine whether the change in reporting position of CI led to higher market pricing of CI volatility incremental to NI volatility (“incremental CI volatility”), as measured by the price-earnings relationship. We find that the market pricing of incremental CI volatility increased from the pre- to the post-ASU period for non-financial firms forced to change the reporting position of CI from equity to performance statements. The increase is more prominent for firms that switched to the income statement than for firms that switched to a separate statement of CI. Further, we find that the increased market pricing of incremental CI volatility translates into lower valuation weights on other comprehensive income.     

The Treatment of Non-Recurring Items in the Income Statement and their Consistency with FASB Concept Statements

This study provides evidence on the consistency of Accounting Principles Board Statement No. 30 (APB, 1973) classification criteria with the objectives of the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Concept Statements Nos 1 and 2 (FASB, 1978, 1980). It is hypothesized that the current APB 30 requirement to classify items of a non-recurring nature in the operating section of the income statement decreases the predictive ability of income before extraordinary items. A random sample of 50 firms with non-recurring adjustments to income, which were included in the operating section of the income statement, was selected from Standard and Poor's Corporation Records. Naive models were used to generate earnings per share forecasts for the year in which the adjustment to income occurred, the prior year and subsequent year.
The results indicate a statistically significant decrease in the predictive ability of earnings per share before extraordinary items associated with the year that the adjustment occurred and a significant increase in the variability of earnings per share. Also, differences in predictive ability were noted between small and large firms and firms with positive and negative adjustments to income.
The results of this study also imply that the managers of most firms with negative adjustments to income are not using the adjustments to smooth income for either the purpose of decreasing the variability of earnings or increasing predictability. The results are more consistent with the 'big bath' theory. These conclusions appear to be more relevant for smaller firms than larger firms.     

Volatility and risk relevance of comprehensive income

Motivated by concerns that the volatility of comprehensive income leads to the perception of increased risk we investigate the volatility and risk relevance of comprehensive income relative to net income for a sample of non-financial firms over the period 2005–2010. We find that comprehensive income is more volatile than net income and that comprehensive income is associated with market-based measures of risk (volatility of stock returns and beta). However, the volatility of comprehensive income incremental to net income is not associated with market risk and is not priced. These results have important implications for the FASB in deciding whether to report comprehensive income in a single statement of performance.