Model-based earnings forecasts vs. financial analysts' earnings forecasts

Existing accounting-based forecasting models of earnings either do not fully consider information that is contained in stock prices or use an ad hoc specification that is not based on rigorous valuation theory. In this paper, we develop an earnings forecasting model built on the theoretical linkages between future earnings and stock prices as well as a number of accounting fundamental variables. We find that our model-based forecasts of earnings are in general less biased and more accurate than both existing model-based forecasts and analysts' consensus forecasts, at both shorter and longer horizons. We also show that the accuracy of both model-based forecasts and financial analysts' forecasts depend on firm-specific characteristics such as firm size and industry membership.     

Accrual usage to manage earnings toward financial analysts' forecasts

This study examines whether management uses discretionary accounting accruals to move earnings upward toward analysts' earnings forecasts when it appears that earnings before discretionary accruals will fall short of the forecast. An earnings shortfall relative to analysts' forecasts could lead management to fear lower compensation and an increase in the likelihood of job termination. The article finds that firms whose earnings before discretionary accruals are below analysts' forecasts use income-increasing discretionary accruals and do so to a greater extent than do firms whose earnings before discretionary accruals are above analysts' forecasts.     

Long-run abnormal return after IPOs and optimistic analysts' forecasts

This empirical study examines whether the optimistic forecasts of analysts explain the long-run abnormal return following initial public offerings (IPOs). Consistent with prior research, this paper concludes that the analysis of earning forecasts for firms going public has an upward bias. While the usually calculated buy-and-hold abnormal return is not significantly negative on average, a proper control for risk confirms the long-run underperformance hypothesis for the 1-year period following IPOs. The risk-adjusted return is positively correlated to the surprise effect and earning forecast revisions, and appears to be the response to new information about the true earnings perspectives.     

Understanding analysts' use of stock returns and other analysts' revisions when forecasting earnings

We investigate analysts' use of stock returns and other analysts' forecast revisions in revising their own forecasts after an earnings announcement. We find that analysts respond more strongly to these signals when the signals are more informative about future earnings changes. Although analysts underreact to these signals on average, we find that analysts who are most sensitive to signal informativeness achieve superior forecast accuracy relative to their peers and have a greater influence on the market. The results suggest that the ability to extract information from the actions of others serves as one source of analyst expertise.     

Archival data of financial analysts' earnings forecasts in the euro zone: Problems with euro conversions

In multi-country studies, researchers frequently extract data in a single currency rather than in native currencies. This approach can be misleading for financial analysts’ forecasts in the euro zone when researchers are using the IBES database. We suspect that forecasts of earnings before the birth of the euro on January 1, 1999 are kept in national currencies, although they are supposed to be displayed in euros, which can severely distort results concerning earnings forecast accuracy. We propose a simple procedure for checking for the existence of this error, as well as a quick solution to overcome it.     

Management earnings forecasts and other forward-looking statements

We identify forward-looking statements (FLS) in firms’ disclosures to distinguish between “forecast-like” (quantitative statements about earnings) and “other”, or non-forecast-like, FLS.  We show that, like earnings forecasts, other FLS generate significant investor and analyst responses. Unlike earnings forecasts, other FLS are issued more frequently when uncertainty is higher. We then show that earnings-related FLS are more sensitive to uncertainty than quantitative statements, suggesting that managers are more likely to alter the content than the form of FLS when uncertainty is higher.  Our study indicates that incorporating other FLS into empirical measures provides a more comprehensive proxy for firms’ voluntary disclosures.     

Analyst versus model-based earnings forecasts: implied cost of capital applications

We find that a composite implied cost of capital (ICC) estimate – based on the earnings forecasts generated by cross-sectional models – is highly correlated with future realised returns in both portfolio- and regression-based tests. By contrast, we find very little evidence for an association with future realised returns for an ICC estimate based on analyst earnings forecasts. We also document the time-varying nature of expected returns and risk premia, and provide up-to-date estimates of an implied Australian market risk premium.     

Macro information environment change and the quality of management earnings forecasts

The 1990s were characterized by substantial increases in the performance of and investor reliance on financial analysts. Because managers possess superior private information and issue forecasts to align investors’ expectations with their own, we predict that managers increased the quality of their earnings forecasts during the 1990s in order to keep pace with the improved forward-looking information provided by financial analysts, upon which investors increasingly relied. Using a sample of 2,437 management earnings forecasts, we document an increase in management earnings forecast precision, management earnings forecast accuracy, and managers’ tendency to explain earnings forecasts in 1993–1996 relative to 1983–1986. Given that these forecast characteristics are linked to greater informativeness and credibility, we also document that the information content of management earnings forecasts, as measured by the strength of share price responses to forecast news, increased in 1993–1996 relative to 1983–1986. As expected, the increased information content of management forecasts primarily occurred for firms covered by financial analysts.

Value relevance of analyst earnings forecasts in emerging markets

Even though research in accounting and finance has extensively examined the role of financial analysts in developed economies, this issue has not been thoroughly examined in an emerging market setting. In this paper, I examine whether, following a market opening, analyst forecast accuracy and the market's reliance on analyst forecasts increase with time. Accuracy is expected to increase over time as analysts exert more effort and gain valuable forecasting experience. Results indicate that time is positively related to analyst forecast accuracy after controlling for a number of other firm and country characteristics. Second, I posit that time should also be related to the market's propensity to use analyst forecasts to form earnings expectations. As markets open and investors become more sophisticated, the reliance on analyst forecasts should also increase. Results are consistent with this expectation. In particular, I find that in the first sub-period earnings expectations based on random walk exhibit greater relative information content than earnings expectations based on analyst forecasts. This pattern is reversed in the third sub-period where analyst forecast errors better explain returns. Incremental information content tests produce similar results. Future research should further investigate the relation between financial analysts and other important market characteristics in emerging economies.     

The association between management earnings forecasts, earnings management, and stock market valuation: Evidence from French IPOs

This study investigates managers' motivations to engage in earnings management through purposeful interventions in the setting of discretionary accruals, in the context of initial public offerings (IPOs) in France. Firms issuing forecasts in their prospectuses are expected to differ from nonforecasters in the level of earnings management during the year following the public offering. Within the context of contracting theory, four research questions are addressed. First, are IPO firms issuing forecasts more inclined to manage earnings 1 year after an IPO compared to nonforecasting firms? Second, is a forecasting firm's level of earnings management conditioned by earnings-forecast deviation? Third, is earnings management by IPO forecasting firms affected by contractual and governance environments? Fourth, how do investors see through earnings management following IPO earnings forecasts, i.e., how do stock market participants value earnings components (i.e., nondiscretionary and discretionary accruals)? Our findings document that in the year following an IPO, the magnitude of earnings management is much higher for forecasters than for nonforecasters. Results also show that a firm's accrual behavior is affected by earnings-forecast deviation, but the relationship is moderated by contractual and governance constraints. Finally, it would appear that French investors do not adequately readjust the relationship between reported earnings and a firm's market value for the year in which earnings are subject to manipulations.     

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.     

Stock market response to analysts' perceptions and earnings in a technology-intensive environment

This paper investigates the contemporaneous stock market response to financial analysts' perceptions of the firm and accounting earnings in the telecommunication and electronics industry in Finland. Analysts' perceptions used in the study are based on the Most Admired Companies survey similar to that conducted by Fortune magazine in the United States. The results indicate the nonfinancial information of the firm measured in terms of the analysts' perceptions has value relevance in a technology-oriented stock market.     

Impact of the Corporate Law Economic Reform Program Act 1999 on initial public offering prospectus earnings forecasts

Commencing 13 March 2000, the Corporate Law Economic Reform Program Act 1999 (Cth) introduced changes to the regulation of corporate fundraising in Australia. In particular, it effected a reduction in the litigation risk associated with initial public offering prospectus disclosure. We find that the change is associated with a reduction in forecast frequency and an increase in forecast value relevance, but not with forecast error or bias. These results confirm previous findings that changes in litigation risk affect the level but not the quality of disclosure. They also suggest that the reforms' objectives of reducing fundraising costs while improving investor protection, have been achieved.     

Effect of foreign GAAP earnings and Form 20-F reconciliations on revisions of analysts' forecasts

A controversial area of U.S. securities regulations involves the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) financial reporting requirements for foreign firms, specifically, the necessity of providing a quantitative reconciliation to U.S. GAAP (Form 20-F). The results of earnings-returns research to date indicate that the release of foreign GAAP earnings provides important information. However, the results of earnings-returns studies using reconciled information are mixed. Instead of using an earnings-returns methodology adopted in prior research, this study utilizes analysts' revisions as a market indicator of the effect of information released in foreign GAAP earnings and the reconciled information in Form 20-F. Additionally, the study investigates the influence of four firm-specific variables in the firm's information environment—similarities of accounting systems, analyst following, difference between reconciled earnings and foreign GAAP earnings, and dispersion of analysts' expectations—on positive abnormal revision activities of financial analysts at the time of filing Form 20-F.The results indicate that the release of foreign GAAP earnings (at earnings announcement dates) and reconciled information (at the time of filing Form 20-F) contains relevant information as measured by analysts' revisions. Further, variables representing analyst following, change in reconciled earnings, and dispersion of analysts' expectations are significant in explaining the variation observed in positive abnormal revisions.     

The heterogeneous impact of macroeconomic information on firms' earnings forecasts

This paper re-examines the role of macroeconomic information in forecasting firm earnings. We adopt a Fama–MacBeth regression model with the important extension of including information from over 140 macroeconomic variables that enter into the model in a reduced dimension form as a consequence of common factor analysis. The resulting factor-augmented model is then used to evaluate the importance of macroeconomic information on earnings forecasts for U.S. firms from 1962 to 2009. The same model is also examined for each individual time window and industry subsample. The results reveal a clear and heterogeneous impact of macroeconomic information on firm-specific earnings forecasts, and that these effects differ markedly during certain periods and across industries. In addition, when compared to analyst forecasts, we show that our model is generally more accurate over longer forecast horizons. The results of the identified heterogeneous impacts are used to define the conditions under which macroeconomic information becomes important for the firm.     

Earnings seasonality,management earnings forecasts and stock returns

We examine whether management earnings forecasts (MEFs) help reduce the stock return seasonality associated with earnings seasonality around earnings announcements (EAs) in Chinese A-share markets. We find that firms in historically low earnings seasons outperform firms in high earnings seasons by 2.1% around MEFs. Firms in low earnings seasons also have higher trading volume and return volatility than their counterparts around EAs and MEFs. MEFs significantly reduce the ability of historical seasonal earnings rankings to negatively predict announcement returns, volume and volatility around EAs. The reduction effects are stronger when MEFs are voluntary or made closer to EAs. The evidence suggests that MEFs facilitate the correction of investors’ tendency to extrapolate earnings seasonality and its resulted stock mispricing.     

The impact of the CSRC Regulation No. 12-1996 on the credibility of Chinese IPO earnings forecasts

This study examines whether the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission (the CSRC) Regulation No. 12-1996, Announcement of Some Rules on the Issuance of Shares, may enhance the credibility of management earnings forecasts in Chinese IPO prospectuses. Using a sample of 858 IPO earnings forecasts over the period 1991–2005, we find that earnings forecasts have been less optimistic and more accurate after the regulation was promulgated on December 26, 1996. Overall, our findings suggest that the CSRC Regulation No. 12-1996 can improve the reliability of Chinese IPO earnings forecasts.     

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.     

Management earnings forecasts and analyst forecasts:Evidence from mandatory disclosure system

Distinct from the literature on the effects that management earnings forecasts(MEFs) properties, such as point, range and qualitative estimations, have on analy...