Timeliness of Annual Report Releases and Market Reaction to Earnings Announcements in an Emerging Capital Market: The Case of China

This paper examines the relation between firm performance and the timing of annual report releases in an emerging capital market. Based on the population of listed Chinese firms with A-shares for 1994-1997, we find that good news firms release their annual reports earlier than bad news firms, and loss firms release their annual reports the latest. Moreover, consistent with Chambers and Penman (1984) and Begley and Fischer (1998), these firms unexpectedly accelerate the release of good news and delay the disclosure of bad news relative to their previous reporting pattern. We also observe a significant price reaction to the annual earnings announcements for both early (good news) and late (bad news) reporting firms. Similar results are found for those A-share firms which have also issued B- or H-shares to foreign investors. Our study documents a systematic timing pattern of annual report disclosures, which is useful for investors to predict future earnings, especially in anticipating bad news in China's emerging market where information about future earnings is very limited.     

Differential Interpretations,Private Information and Trading Volume Around French Firms' Good News vs. Bad News Preliminary Announcements

ABSTRACT

This study provides new evidence that both differential interpretations and private information production spur trading volume for a sample of 144 preliminary earnings announcements in the French markets. After partitioning the sample into preliminary announcements that convey good news versus bad news, I find that good news stimulates more production of private information, whereas bad news leads to more differential interpretations. I further find that increased production of private information (but not differential interpretations) helps explain trading volume around good news preliminary earnings announcements. In contrast, differential interpretations (and not private information) help explain trading volume around bad news preliminary earnings announcements.     

The Effects of Conservative Reporting on Investor Disagreement

We examine whether the level of a firm's conditional conservatism affects investor disagreement around earnings announcement dates. Investor disagreement is relevant for its repercussions on stock market efficiency. However, the literature related to the effect of firms’ reporting policies on disagreement is scant. Prior research suggests that conservatism, by requiring higher verifiability of profits, constrains earnings overstatements and encourages more complete revelations of losses, thus improving the information environment. In this paper, we further hypothesize that these effects of conservatism enhance news credibility and decrease information asymmetry, particularly for bad news announcements. This results in a lower disagreement and improved interpretation of earnings news. We consistently find that conservatism measures are negatively associated with proxies of announcement-time investor disagreement and that this effect is stronger when the firm is reporting bad news. Additional analyses indicate that the impact of conservatism is stronger when market surprise to the announcement is greater, while it is weaker in the presence of frequent and precise voluntary disclosure that preempts the earnings announcement. Finally, we show that a higher percentage of institutional investors’ ownership and a higher level of commitment to conservatism reinforce the impact of the latter.     

How Important are Earnings Announcements as an Information Source?

In a competitive information market, a single information source can only dominate other sources individually, not collectively. We explore whether earnings announcements constitute such a dominant source using Ball and Shivakumar's (2008) [How much new information is there in earnings?, Journal of Accounting Research, 2008, 46(5), pp. 975–1016] R ² metric: the proportion of the variation in annual returns explained by the four quarterly earnings announcement returns. We find that the earnings announcement days' R ² is 11% – higher than the corresponding R ² of days with dividend announcements, management forecasts, preannouncements, and 10-K and 10-Q filings and their amendments, and comparable to that of the four days with the largest realised absolute returns in a year. Additional analysis reveals that earnings announcements convey extreme bad news as often as management forecasts and preannouncements; for any other type of news, earnings announcements are much more frequent. We conclude that earnings announcements are an important source of new information in the equity market.     

Loan loss reporting,early disclosure,and investor reactions

Several prior studies present evidence that bank loan-loss announcements have a significant impact on shareholder wealth. There is no satisfactory explanation, however, as to why these announcements should change share prices. This paper examines loan-loss announcements in the context of the early disclosure literature. We find banks that publicly announce losses before releasing their quarterly earnings report have a significant increase in shareholder wealth following the loan-loss announcement. Banks that choose to publicly announce loan-loss increases with the release of quarterly-earnings report experience a significant decrease in shareholder wealth prior to the loan-loss announcement. Our results support the notion that the timing of the loan-loss announcement provides information to investors.     

The Role of the Business Press in Creating and Disseminating Information around Earnings Announcements

This paper investigates the role of the business press in creating and disseminating information around earnings announcements by examining different motivations of trading volume. We find that press coverage is positively associated with trading activity motivated by differential interpretation and by differential belief revision, consistent with the press playing both an information creation and information dissemination role around earnings announcements. When we divide press coverage into full articles with additional editorial content and news flashes merely repeating verbatim of firm-disclosed press releases, we find that trading volume motivated by both differential interpretation and differential belief revision increases as coverage by full articles increases, and trading volume motivated by differential belief revision increases as coverage by news flashes increases. We also report that the differential interpretation effect of full articles is more pronounced when information users’ sophistication is high. Overall, we provide new evidence to the literature by showing that each type of press coverage plays an informational role in different motivations of trading activity.     

定期报告预约披露日期的信息含量

沪深两交易所从2002年初开始对外公布上市公司向其预约的定期报告披露日期,本文研究了这一日期是否包含对投资者有用的信息。我们发现,在交易所公布预约日期时,公司的预约披露日期越早,则其异常回报越高,反之则低。市场的这种反应可以用随后公布的实际会计业绩好坏加以解释。我们还考察了市场的这种反应在横截面上的差异,对发布过”好消息”的预警公告及规模较大的公司,市场的反应程度较低;同时还发现预约披露日期的信息含量并未被”坏消息”的业绩预警公告所取代,这说明预约披露日期对“坏消息”的预警公司起到了进一步的证实作用。     

News and intraday jumps: Evidence from regularization and class imbalance

We study how information provokes intraday price jumps taking into account, besides news timing, the sentiment of news stories and other high-frequency indicators. By applying penalized logistic regression and addressing the rare nature of jumps, in addition to the previous evidence showing that causes of jumps are rate decisions and earnings announcements, we find that news provoking jumps is often followed by other news about the same company, that news stories sentiment and macro-surprises sign help to predict the jump sign, and, finally, that market players sometimes anticipate company-specific news.     

The Information Content of Guidance and Earnings

I compare the information content of quarterly earnings guidance and quarterly earnings by examining their associations with current and future stock returns when the two signals are bundled at earnings announcements. At the bundled announcement, I find a significantly stronger association between announcement returns and guidance news. From the day after the bundled announcement through the next earnings announcement, both signals generate abnormal return drifts of about 200 basis points. However, the timing of the post-announcement returns differs considerably. For guidance, about 50% of the post-announcement drift occurs at the next earnings announcement. In contrast, for earnings, about 20% of the preceding drift reverses at the next earnings announcement. Investor ignorance of the drift following guidance news coupled with a fixation on post-earnings announcement drift potentially explains this surprising difference in the timing of the post-announcement returns. Overall, this study indicates that bundled quarterly earnings guidance contains more information than quarterly earnings and that investors incorrectly overweight the earnings news and underweight the guidance news during the post-announcement period until the next earnings announcement.     

Implications of limited investor attention to customer–supplier information transfers

This study focuses on the market reaction to information transfers from economically linked customers. I examine whether investors have limited attention with respect to the information contained in customer earnings announcements for suppliers. Using 1083 unique customer–supplier relationships for the period 1983–2011, I find that the cumulative abnormal returns of a supplier surrounding and following linked customers’ earnings announcements are positively related to the earnings information of the customers, suggesting that customer earnings announcements convey information to suppliers. I also find that the post-earnings announcement drift in customers contributes to the cross-firm reaction, and the predictability of customer earnings surprises for suppliers’ future returns is not entirely due to limited investor attention.     

The Impact of the Asian Financial Crisis on Conservatism and Timeliness of Earnings: Evidence from Hong Kong,Malaysia, Singapore,and Thailand

This paper examines conservatism and timeliness of earnings in the period surrounding the 1997 Asian financial crisis in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Prior research suggests that managers tended to be more aggressive in reporting good news and delayed recognition of bad news during the financial crisis (less conservative and less timely in financial reporting). After the crisis, these four countries implemented corporate governance measures to stabilize their financial systems and improve regulation and supervision (that should improve conservatism and timeliness). We examine and find that conservatism and timeliness of earnings during the crisis period are low, but improved in the post‐crisis period. More importantly, conservatism and timeliness in the post‐crisis period is even greater than in the pre‐crisis period. We measure conservatism using Basu's model and the accumulation of non‐operating accruals suggested by Givoly and Hayn. The findings from both measures are consistent with an increase in conservatism after the crisis period. Overall, the results indicate that corporate governance reforms in these four countries had a positive impact on conservatism and timeliness of earnings.     

Earnings announcements and the variability of stock returns

This article is concerned with the dissemination process of firm-specific annual earnings information in the Norwegian capital market. We find a significant reduction in stock price volatility in the post-announcement period relative to the pre-announcement period for companies traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange in the period 1990–1995. Potential explanations for this phenomenon are tested by relating the observed return volatility to changes in the volatility of the underlying business, the speed at which information is incorporated into stock prices, and the amount of noise in the price process. The empirical analyses reveal no significant changes in either the underlying business variance or the price adjustment coefficients. However, we find a significant decline in the noise term for the largest companies after the earnings release date, supporting the hypothesis that earnings announcements reduce informational asymmetries among investors.     

The reaction of security prices to tracking stock announcements

This paper provides some empirical evidence on a relatively new and increasingly prevalent form of equity restructuring called tracking stock. We identify the effects associated with tracking stock announcements by excluding from our sample those announcement events that include other significant news announcements on the event date, such as announcements of acquisitions and earnings. For the 35 announcement events that fit this criteria, we find a mean abnormal return of over 3 percent in the two-day period surrounding the announced proposal to issue a tracking stock, with 30 of the 35 firms in the sample earning positive abnormal returns. The views expressed in this paper are that of the author(s) and do not reflect the views or opinions of Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. or any of its affiliates.     

Intraday effect of news on emerging European forex markets: An event study analysis

We analyze the impact of euro zone/German and U.S. macroeconomic news announcements and the communication of the monetary policy settings of the ECB and the Fed on the forex markets of new EU members. We employ an event study methodology to analyze intraday data from 2011–2015. Our comprehensive analysis of the wide variety of macroeconomic information during the post-GFC period shows that: (i) macroeconomic announcements affect the value of the new EU country exchange rates, (ii) the origin of the announcement matters, (iii) the type of announcement matters, (iv) different types of news (good, bad or neutral) result in different reactions, (v) markets react not only after the news release but also before, (vi) when the U.S. dollar is the base currency the impact of the news is larger than in the case of the euro, (vii) announcements on ECB monetary policy result in stronger effects than those of the Fed, (viii) temporary inefficiencies are present in new EU country forex markets, (ix) new EU country exchange rates react differently to positive US news during the EU debt crisis compared to the rest of the period.     

The Impact of Introducing Estimates of the Future on International Comparability in Earnings Expectations

The objective of this paper is to assess whether the inclusion of improved estimates of the future in corporate annual financial statements has brought about greater international comparability. It is argued that including more relevant information in financial reporting enables users to estimate earnings that are more able to reflect current economic conditions and up-to-date expectations of the future and thus recognize news in a more timely manner. To reflect the underlying economics of integrating financial markets, earnings expectations must be not only more timely but also more comparable. Thus, in examining the increasingly widespread adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), this study considers both the timeliness and the comparability of earnings expectations in the European Union, before and after the mandatory IFRS implementation. The empirical findings support the view that users' earnings estimates have indeed become more timely in recognizing market news and significantly more comparable.     

Bond review and rating change announcements: An examination of informational value and market efficiency

This paper examines the impact of announcements of both bond rating reviews and rating changes on equity returns. We find that announcements of review for possible down grading of debt have a significant negative effect on stock prices while subsequent actual downgrades have a negligible impact. Further, we find that press releases convey new information to the market whereas the subsequent reporting of this information in the financial press causes little market reaction. We conclude that extreme care regarding details of the dissemination of financial information must be exercised in any event study.     

The Information Content of Concurrently Announced Earnings, Cash Dividends, and Stock Dividends: An Investigation of the Chinese Stock Market

The firms listed on China's stock market are less than ten years old and to date there has been relatively little research on the usefulness of their accounting disclosures for investors. This study focuses on the information content of annual earnings and dividend announcements made by listed Chinese companies. Earnings, cash dividends, and stock dividends are announced concurrently in China and so this allows for tests of their information usefulness and of the interactions between the three signals. Based on a data set of up to 1,232 announcements, we find that unexpected earnings, proxied by earnings changes, are positively related to abnormal returns. Thus, earnings are used by investors in setting market prices. Stock dividends corroborate or attenuate the earnings signal. If the sign of the unexpected stock dividend (increase, decrease) is the same as the sign of the unexpected earnings, then the earnings signal is stronger. If the signs are opposite, the earnings signal is weaker. Unexpected cash dividends have little impact on the earnings signal. Stock dividends per se have a small association with stock returns. In contrast, cash dividends have no discernible association with stock returns and this is consistent with dividend irrelevance arguments. Our results are robust across a number of sensitivity tests.     

An Investigation of Stock Price Declines Following Corporate Financing Events: Further Evidence

Prior research documents a large downward drift in stock prices following issuances of debt and equity by US firms. We conduct tests based on both stock price and trading volume to provide evidence on the reasons for this apparent market anomaly. We document evidence of earnings management through accruals prior to external financing and lower operating performance afterward that is associated with the amount of capital raised. The earnings management that precedes external financing and the amount of capital raised are associated with both the post-financing decline in stock price and trading volume around earnings announcements that follow for a period of three years. This evidence is consistent with the proposition that firms raise external capital prior to predictable declines in their operating performance and they release upward biased earnings before these events to manage investor expectations. The failure of many investors to incorporate this information into their trading decisions in a timely manner consistent with limited attention and over-confidence appears to drive stock mispricing. Our evidence does not support the conjecture that the financing anomaly is primarily a statistical artifact or that it is a manifestation of the accrual anomaly.     

Market Reaction to Goodwill Impairments

This paper examines the information content of goodwill write-downs under International Accounting Standard (IAS) 36 (Impairment of Assets) and Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 142. We investigate whether the informational value depends on the reliability of the news. Using a sample of 564 goodwill write-down announcements issued from 2005 to 2009, we find a negative capital market reaction to announcements of unexpected goodwill write-offs. Our results indicate that investors react more negatively when a country's level of legal protection is low and allows more management discretion. We further report that market reaction is associated with managers explaining the write-down decision and depends on the verifiability of these explanations. Investors react more negatively when an unverifiable internal explanation is given and less negatively when a verifiable external explanation is provided. We do not find significant differences between write-down announcements under SFAS 142 and IAS 36.     

Impact of regulation fair disclosure on the information flow associated with profit warnings

By implementing Regulation Fair Disclosure (RFD), the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) intention is to ensure that all market participants have equal access to information, thereby preventing the flow of material information to analysts before other participants. We find that the negative valuation effects of profit warnings are attenuated following the introduction of RFD. This finding implies that since the implementation of RFD, the market appears to rely less on profit warning announcements. We also find that RFD has effectively reduced the leakage of material information to the analyst's favored clients, the market response to profit warnings is less negative when the issuing firm has multiple warnings, and when the warning does not apply beyond the prevailing quarter.