Understanding Stock Price Volatility: The Role of Earnings

In an efficient capital market, asset prices vary when investors change their expectations about cash flows, discount rates, or both. Using dividends to measure cash flows, previous research shows that the aggregate dividend‐price ratio varies due to changes in expected discount rates (returns) rather than expected cash flows. In contrast, using accounting earnings instead of dividends as a measure of cash flows, this paper shows that as much as 70% of the variation in the dividend‐price ratio can be explained by changes in expected earnings. Moreover, the paper documents a significant negative correlation between expected returns and expected earnings, suggesting that variations in a common factor to both may generate significant price volatility. The results are consistent with the dividend‐policy irrelevance hypothesis.     

Prediction of Operating Cash Flows: Further Evidence from Australia

This paper examines empirically the relative abilities of current operating cash flows (hereafter OCF) and earnings in predicting future operating cash flows in Australia. It extends prior Australian research on cash flow prediction ( Percy and Stokes 1992 ; Clinch, Sidhu and Sing 2002 ; Farshadfar, Ng and Brimble 2009 ) by examining future cash flow predictions for one‐, two‐ and three‐year‐ahead forecast horizons; incorporating additional contextual variables likely to affect the predictive association between current cash flows or earnings and future cash flows; and comparing cross‐sectional versus time series‐based prediction models to ascertain the relative superiority of one approach over the other. Regression results reveal that the cash flow‐based models are more accurate in predicting future operating cash flows than earnings‐based models. This result, however, is moderated by firm‐specific contextual factors like firm size, negative versus positive cash flow pattern, cash flow variability and firm operating cycle. Finally, a comparison between cross‐sectional and time series approaches reveals that the cross‐sectional model outperforms the time series model for both the operating cash flows and earnings models in most of the forecast years.     

The Relationship between Earnings,Funds Flows and Cash Flows: Evidence for the UK

Recent UK information content studies have provided evidence of a significant relationship between earnings and share prices, as in the US, but have also identified an apparent lack of information content for operating cash flow, which is in marked contrast to findings from US research. This paper provides direct evidence on the relationship between earnings, funds flows and cash flows in the UK during the period 1965–84, using tests of association and predictive tests based on a research methodology applied by Bowen, Burgstahler and Daley (1986) to US data. The results provide UK evidence on the contemporaneous and predictive relationships between measures of earnings, funds flows and cash flows which are generally consistent with the US findings of Bowen et al. and which do not support the view that earnings in the UK are superior to cash flows as predictors of future cash flows.     

An analysis of the value of cash flow statements of New Zealand pension schemes

Superannuation (pension, retirement) schemes (plans) are required to report their earnings on a fair-value basis, reflecting recent shifts toward fair-value reporting in financial reporting. Fair-value earnings of such schemes include realised earnings and unrealised changes in values of assets and liabilities (unrealised earnings). This study examines the relation between components of fair-value earnings (realised and unrealised) and cash flows of 161 New Zealand defined benefit schemes for the financial year 1998. The findings of the study include that realised earnings are negatively associated with unrealised earnings and positively associated with cash flows from operations, but no association is found between unrealised earnings and cash flows from operations. This suggests that fair-value reporting has reduced the informational disparity between realised earnings and operating cash flows and therefore the reporting of cash flows information may not provide users with different information from reported in realised earnings. However, the results suggest that unrealised earnings provide additional information to users.     

Dividend policy of German firms: A panel data analysis of partial adjustment models

German firms pay out a lower proportion of their cash flows, but a higher proportion of their published profits than UK and US firms. We estimate partial adjustment models and report two major findings. First, German firms base their dividend decisions on cash flows rather than published earnings as (i) published earnings do not correctly reflect performance because German firms retain parts of their earnings to build up legal reserves, (ii) German accounting is conservative, (iii) published earnings are subject to more smoothing than cash flows. Second, to the opposite of UK and US firms, German firms have more flexible dividend policies as they are willing to cut the dividend when profitability is only temporarily down.     

Changes in accrual properties and operating environment: Implications for cash flow predictability

This paper reconciles conflicting evidence in prior literature on the relative ability of earnings and cash flows in predicting future cash flows. Further, we investigate the implications of temporal shifts in accrual properties and operating environment for cash flow predictability. Three key insights emerge. First, cash flows consistently outperform earnings in predicting future cash flows. Second, accruals and its components, including those capturing non-articulating events, have incremental (albeit small) predictive ability over cash flows. Third, earnings’ ability to predict future cash flows has increased over the period 1989–2015, due to changes in operating environment rather than accrual properties.     

The joint information role of analysts’ cash flow and earnings forecasts

We study whether the relative magnitudes of analysts’ cash flow and earnings forecasts convey information about the persistence and value relevance of reported earnings. We find that reported earnings are likely to be more (less) persistent and value relevant when analysts forecast relatively moderate (extreme) levels of operating cash flows, relative to earnings. We also find that the market’s response to a given earnings surprise is the strongest for moderate levels of cash flow forecasts relative to earnings. The joint information role of analysts’ cash flow and earnings forecasts persists even after controlling for the absolute accruals in the model.     

The market's perception of the information conveyed by dividend announcements

This paper tests whether the market perceives announced dividend changes to reflect information about current and/or future cash flows. The empirical relationship between dividend changes and earnings changes is inconclusive. Furthermore, there is no empirical evidence regarding the market's perception of managers' intentions in changing the level of dividends. By analyzing the price reaction of scores to an announced dividend change, we are able to isolate the effects of a short-term change and a long-term change. Our findings indicate that the market perceives dividend changes to reflect a long-term change in earnings.     

Accruals quality and the incentive contracting role of earnings

This paper investigates the association between accruals quality and the usefulness of accounting earnings in incentive contracting. Accruals quality, which measures the precision with which accruals predict future cash flows, has two potential opposing effects on the noise in earnings as a measure of managerial performance. Specifically, higher quality accruals should decrease the deviations of earnings from future cash flows and increase the sensitivity of earnings to cash flows that are not attributable to managerial actions. My evidence indicates that better accruals quality is associated with a higher weight on earnings in compensation contracts, which suggests that accruals quality overall reduces the noise in earnings. I also find that the positive association between accruals quality and the weight on earnings is mainly driven by innate accruals quality rather than discretionary accruals quality. Therefore, accrual errors resulting from the volatility of the operating environment are a primary source of noise in earnings considered by compensation committees.     

The usefulness of operating cash flow and accrual components in improving the predictive ability of earnings: a re‐examination and extension

We examine whether the components of accruals and operating cash flows improve the predictive ability of earnings for forecasting future cash flows. Unlike most previous studies, we avoid data estimation errors and sample self‐selection bias because we exploit data from Australia where reporting of actual cash flow components had been mandatory since 1992. We show that accrual components and operating cash flow components together are more useful than (i) earnings, (ii) operating cash flows and total accruals and (iii) the combination of operating cash flows with accrual components in forecasting future cash flows. These results are robust to several contextual factors, including the length of the operating cash cycle, industry membership, firm profitability and firm size.     

The Ability of Earnings to Predict Future Operating Cash Flows Has Been Increasing—Not Decreasing

We investigate the relationship between earnings and one‐year‐ahead operating cash flows from 1973 to 2000. Although the extant research indicates a weakening relationship between contemporaneous earnings and stock prices over time, we find that the relationship between current earnings and future operating cash flows has increased over time. This result holds for numerous divisions of our sample. Out‐of‐sample predictions of operating cash flows generally show increasing forecast accuracy over time. Increasing accounting conservatism appears to play a role in this phenomenon.     

会计盈余、现金流量的价值相关性实证研究基于沪深股市的实证证据

已有的研究结果说明会计盈余具有价值相关性。从盈余等于经营现金流量与应计利润之和这一新的视角切入，以实证的方法对沪深两地上市的A股公司进行三大样本检验。并通过建立股票报酬与应计利润和现金流量的回归方程，利用应计利润回归系数的显著性对会计盈余与现金流量的价值相关性做比较，结果表明，会计盈余的价值相关性要大于现金流量的价值相关性。     

不同收益水平上盈余信息与股利政策的交互关系研究

以沪深上市公司为样本,检验盈余信息和股利政策在不同收益上的解释作用,并深入研究盈余信息分别与现金股利、股票股利和多种分配方案等三个层面的股利政策的交互关系。结果表明:在大多数收益水平上,盈余信息和股利政策显著影响市场收益水平,而且二者之间存在显著的交互关系。具体而言,现金股利变化与盈余变化在不同收益水平上具有不同的交互影响;而股票股利与盈余信息的交互影响在各收益水平上均不十分突出;多种分配方案中的"综合政策"与盈余变动在各收益水平上表现出较大的正向交互影响。     

Dividend payout and executive compensation: theory and evidence from New Zealand

Using a model based on Bhattacharyya (2007), we predict a positive (negative) relationship between the earnings retention ratio (dividend payout ratio) and managerial compensation. We use tobit regression to analyse data for New Zealand firms' dividend payouts over the period 1997–2015 and find results consistent with Bhattacharyya (2007). These results hold when the definition of payout is modified to incorporate both common dividends and common share repurchases. Our results indicate that corporate dividend policy among New Zealand firms is perhaps best understood by considering the dividend payout ratio, rather than the level of, or changes in, cash dividends alone.     

The Incremental Information Content of Earnings and Cash Flows from Operations Affected by Their Extremity

Previous returns studies have shown that extreme earnings and extreme cash flows from operations are less informative than moderate (i.e., less extreme) earnings and moderate cash flows. Studies also report that cash flows supplement to earnings in firm valuation by showing a higher association of cash flows with returns when earnings are extreme than when earnings are moderate. We propose that this supplementary role of cash flows is affected by cash flows extremity. Using data from the US capital markets, we find that the supplementary role of cash flows exists only when cash flows are not extreme. We also investigate the supplementary role of earnings to cash flows and search for a higher association of earnings with returns when cash flows are extreme than when cash flows are moderate. Similar to results on cash flows, our findings show that the supplementary role of earnings exists only when earnings are not extreme. Our results imply that investors and researchers should consider both earnings and cash flows extremity when assessing the information content of these variables.     

金融发展影响了公司成熟度与现金股利政策的关系吗?

选取留存收益股权比反映公司成熟度,研究不同金融发展水平下,公司成熟度与现金股利的关系,实证结果显示,伴随公司成熟度的提高,公司实施积极现金股利政策的动机会显著提升;金融发展在提高公司成熟度与现金股利支付倾向正向关系的同时,由于提供更多的投资机会,却弱化了公司成熟度与现金股利支付水平的正向关系。进一步研究发现,金融发展水平的提升能够推迟成熟公司首次对外支付现金股利的时机;其对公司成熟度与现金股利政策关系的影响作用主要源于金融发展的"治理效应"路径;将金融发展分为信贷市场发展和股权市场发展,发现与信贷市场促进公司成熟度与现金股利支付倾向正相关关系不同,股权市场抑制了公司成熟度与现金股利支付倾向及支付水平的正相关关系。     

Regular Dividend Announcements and Future Unexpected Earnings: An Empirical Analysis

Previous studies have interpreted stock price reaction to dividend announcements as being consistent with the hypothesis that any changes are forecasts of future corporate profits. Recent studies seem to provide evidence to this effect. This study provides additional empirical evidence pertaining to the issue of whether quarterly cash dividend announcements convey useful information about a firm's future profitability, beyond that contained in contemporaneous quarterly earnings announcements. The association between unexpected changes in quarterly dividends and unexpected accounting earnings in subsequent quarters is examined, after controlling for information contained in past and current earnings series. The results, based on a large sample of regular quarterly cash dividend changes, indicate that firms that increased (decreased) their dividends realized, on average, greater (smaller) unexpected accounting earnings in subsequent periods than firms that did not change their dividends.     

A Comparison of Earnings Management Between KSE Firms and KOSDAQ Firms

Abstract:   This study investigates differences in earnings management practices of Korea Stock Exchange (KSE) firms and KOSDAQ (a Korean version of the NASDAQ market) firms during the period of 1996–1997. A sample of 1,256 KSE and 577 KOSDAQ firm‐year observations is used to compare earnings management practices of firms listed in the two different stock exchanges. The results of the study reveal that KOSDAQ firms tend to more actively manipulate earnings to avoid losses than KSE firms. KOSDAQ firms generally tend to increase reported earnings more aggressively than KSE firms when their operating cash flows are poor, and play down their reported earnings more when their operating cash flows are exceptionally good. The results of the study are quite robust in the sense that more aggressive earnings management practices of KOSDAQ firms persist even when operating cash flows are controlled.     

THE IMPACT OF THE QUALITY OF EARNINGS ON THE VALUATION RELEVANCE OF CASH FLOW DISCLOSURES

This study investigates whether the ‘quality of earnings’, defined as the relationship between profitability and cash generating ability, is a conditioning factor with regard to the valuation relevance of cash flow disclosures. The study is performed on a sample of 197 British firms employing data over a 23-year period. The results of the study support the contention that the valuation relevance of cash flow disclosures is conditional upon the ‘quality of earnings’, as previously defined. Specifically, the decomposition of unexpected earnings into its cash flow and accruals components provides incremental information content to earnings when the firm-specific time-series correlation between earnings and cash flows is low. Furthermore, the cash flow ‘surprise’ is valued more than the accruals ‘surprise’ when the firm-specific time-series correlation between earnings and cash flows is low.     

The Predictive Ability of Direct Method Cash Flow Information

This research examines the predictive ability of direct method cash flow information for firms that use the direct method in their cash flow statements. We use cross sectional and pooled time series regressions to predict operating cash flow data and assess relative predictive ability. Principal findings are: (1) past period direct method cash flow data predict future operating cash flow better than indirect method cash flow data; (2) past period direct method gross operating cash flows predict future net operating cash flow better than past period net operating cash flow; (3) measurement error exists in estimates of direct method operating cash flows from other financial statement data; (4) past operating cash flows predict future operating cash flows better than earnings and accruals.