Regulation Fair Disclosure and the timeliness of long-horizon management forecasts

We examine the effect of Regulation Fair Disclosure (hereafter Reg FD) on the timeliness of long-horizon management forecasts of annual earnings, especially those conveying bad news. We expect that managers are less timely in issuing bad news forecasts than good news forecasts prior to Reg FD when they can disclose bad news to selected analysts and institutional investors privately. As Reg FD prohibits private disclosures of material information, managers are expected to accelerate the issuance of long-horizon bad news forecasts after Reg FD due to concerns of litigation risk from institutional investors and loss of analyst coverage, leading to a decrease in timeliness asymmetry between bad news and good news forecasts. We also expect that the effect of Reg FD is stronger among firms with lower ex-ante litigation risk or higher information asymmetry as they are more likely to withhold bad news prior to Reg FD. In addition, we expect that investors and analysts react more to bad news forecasts than to good news forecasts prior to Reg FD, and this asymmetry decreases after Reg FD. Our results are consistent with our predictions and suggest that managers provide long-horizon forecasts conveying bad news more timely after Reg FD.     

Do financial analysts' long-term growth forecasts matter? Evidence from stock recommendations and career outcomes

Prior literature portrays long-term growth (LTG) forecasts as nonsensical from a valuation perspective. Instead, we hypothesize that LTG forecasts signal high effort and ability to analyze firms' long-term prospects. We document stronger market response to stock recommendation revisions of analysts who publish accompanying LTG forecasts. We also hypothesize and find that these analysts are less likely to leave the profession or move to smaller brokerage houses. Consistent with Reg. FD's intention to promote fundamental analysis of long-term earnings prospects, post-Reg. FD observations drive our results. Overall, we identify previously undocumented benefits accruing to analysts who publish LTG forecasts.     

The Association between Outside Directors, Institutional Investors and the Properties of Management Earnings Forecasts

We investigate the relation of the board of directors and institutional ownership with the properties of management earnings forecasts. We find that firms with more outside directors and greater institutional ownership are more likely to issue a forecast and are inclined to forecast more frequently. In addition, these forecasts tend to be more specific, accurate and less optimistically biased. These results are robust to changes specification, Granger causality tests, and simultaneous equation analyses. The results are similar in the pre– and post–Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) eras. Additional analysis suggests that concentrated institutional ownership is negatively associated with forecast properties. This association is less negative in the post–Reg FD environment, which is consistent with Reg FD reducing the ability of firms to privately communicate information to select audiences.     

Analyst rounding of EPS forecasts and stock recommendations

We examine the association between analysts' stock recommendations and their tendency to round annual EPS forecasts to nickel intervals (i.e. placing a zero or five in the penny location of the forecast). We find that prior to Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD), analysts were more likely to provide rounded EPS forecasts in association with unfavorable (underperform and sell) recommendations. However, after Reg FD, we find no significant association between rounded forecasts and unfavorable stock recommendations. Further, other regulations (NASD 2711, NYSE 472, and Global Research Analyst Settlement) have no impact on analyst rounding behavior. The findings in this study suggest that analyst rounding behavior is a particular form of forecasting optimism motivated, at least in part, by management relations incentives. Further, Reg FD appears partially successful at curbing the influence of management relations incentives on analysts' research.     

The changing relationship between earnings expectations and earnings for value and growth stocks during Reg FD

Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) altered the voluntary disclosure practices of firms with publicly traded securities, thereby affecting relationships between value and growth stock expectations and actual earnings. The results show that earnings forecasts for both stock groups are biased but that bias is less after the introduction of Reg FD. In fact, the difference in pre/post FD forecast bias is larger for growth stocks, suggesting that before Reg FD, analysts did not just misinterpret news but consciously tried to maintain relationships with growth firm managers. However, Reg FD limited these relationships severing the monetary advantage that might be gained from manipulating forecasts.     

Analyst reputation and the issuance of disaggregated earnings forecasts to I/B/E/S

Although sell-side analysts privately forecast revenues and expenses when producing earnings forecasts, not all analysts choose to provide I/B/E/S with earnings forecasts disaggregated into revenues and expenses. We investigate the role of reputation in explaining this decision. We find that analysts without established reputations are more likely than reputable analysts to issue disaggregated earnings forecasts to I/B/E/S, consistent with I/B/E/S exposure benefits accruing to analysts seeking to establish a reputation. Among less reputable analysts, those with high ability are more likely to disaggregate, consistent with this group reaping greater benefits from the exposure I/B/E/S provides. Additional tests support our primary hypotheses. Among less reputable analysts, those who disaggregate are more (less) likely to be promoted (demoted or terminated). The stock market responds similarly, with more weight assigned to earnings forecast revisions provided by analysts who disaggregate their earnings forecasts.     

Analyst Firm Coverage and Forecast Accuracy: The Effect of Regulation Fair Disclosure

In this study, we revisit the relationship between analyst firm coverage and forecast accuracy. In contrast to the proposed negative association in Clement (1999) owing to the portfolio complexity effect, we hypothesize an ‘economy‐of‐scale effect’ that is likely to dominate when analysts rely mostly on public information. In support of the latter effect, we find a positive association between firm coverage and forecast accuracy after the enactment of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD), which substantially reduces the flow of material private information to analysts. Such a result survives a battery of robustness analyses. We further show that, in the post‐Reg FD period, covering more firms increases an analyst's probability of being selected as a star analyst in the subsequent year. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of the information environment in shaping the economic link between an analyst's firm coverage and forecast accuracy.     

Analyst characteristics, timing of forecast revisions, and analyst forecasting ability

We first examine whether analysts with certain characteristics that prior research has identified are related to superior forecasting ability systematically time their forecast revisions later in the fiscal quarter. We then examine whether this superior ability persists after controlling for the timing advantage by using relative forecast error, a measure that largely eliminates the timing advantage of recent forecasts. Using a sample of quarterly earnings forecast revisions over the 20-year period from 1990 to 2009, we find that analysts with more firm-specific and general experience and more accurate prior-period forecasts, analysts employed by larger brokerage firms, and analysts who follow fewer industries and companies tend to revise forecasts later in the quarter. We also find that analyst characteristics that are positively correlated with revision timing are negatively related to relative forecast errors. These results are consistent with analyst characteristics being useful proxies for analyst forecasting ability and analysts with greater ability revising forecasts later in the quarter.     

Additional Evidence on Analysts’ Decision to Issue Disaggregated Earnings Forecasts: Strategic Biasing

This study examines why analysts issue disaggregated earnings forecasts to I/B/E/S. Some recent studies suggest that analysts with superior forecasting ability issue disaggregated earnings forecasts to build reputation in the marketplace and stop forecast disaggregation once their reputation has been established. Based on an analysis of I/B/E/S forecast data for U.S. firms from 1998 to 2008, we find that, in a given year, about 20%–34% of analysts disaggregate for some, but not for all the firms that they follow. This evidence of selective disaggregation by analysts suggests that reputation building alone does not fully explain the decision to disaggregate forecasts. We hypothesize that the decision to disaggregate earnings forecasts is at the firm‐level as well and is systematically related to the analysts’ bias in the issued forecasts. Our findings are that (a) analysts’ overall optimistic bias and forecast errors decrease monotonically with the level of forecast disaggregation, and (b) analysts that selectively disaggregate their forecasts for some firms or who do not persistently disaggregate a given firm's forecasts exhibit more positive bias and larger forecast errors. Our findings are consistent with the notion that the analysts who issue biased forecasts, for example, to curry favour with the management, are less likely to provide disaggregated information as part of the forecast.     

Information, Selective Disclosure, and Analyst Behavior

This paper examines whether the prohibition of selective disclosures to equity research analysts mandated by Regulation FD alters the amount of information and the manner in which it is revealed to the market. We demonstrate that equity research analysts are more responsive to information contained in company-initiated disclosures after Reg FD, suggesting that regulation has affected the importance of various channels of communication. We also present evidence consistent with the notion that managers use earnings guidance as a substitute for selective disclosure following the passage of Reg FD.     

The Effect of Issuing Biased Earnings Forecasts on Analysts' Access to Management and Survival

This study offers evidence on the earnings forecast bias analysts use to please firm management and the associated benefits they obtain from issuing such biased forecasts in the years prior to Regulation Fair Disclosure. Analysts who issue initial optimistic earnings forecasts followed by pessimistic earnings forecasts before the earnings announcement produce more accurate earnings forecasts and are less likely to be fired by their employers. The effect of such biased earnings forecasts on forecast accuracy and firing is stronger for analysts who follow firms with heavy insider selling and hard‐to‐predict earnings. The above results hold regardless of whether a brokerage firm has investment banking business or not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that analysts use biased earnings forecasts to curry favor with firm management in order to obtain better access to management's private information.     

Are analysts' cash flow forecasts useful?

This study provides evidence that the cost of equity capital decreases with the number of analysts who issue both cash flow and earnings forecasts (cash analysts). The evidence also shows that cash analysts reduce information asymmetry and predict long‐term earnings more accurately than analysts who issue only earnings forecasts. Taken together, these findings suggest that cash analysts provide market participants with high‐quality information and, as a result, firms benefit from cash analyst coverage in the form of a reduced cost of equity capital.     

Regulation FD and analysts’ vs. investors’ weightings of the cash components of earnings

This paper investigates whether investors’ bias in processing the information contained in the cash components of annual earnings has been reduced, and whether the difference in bias between financial analysts and investors has decreased subsequent to Regulation Fair Disclosure (hereafter, Reg FD). We compare analysts’ and investors’ weightings of the three cash flow components of earnings, defined by Dechow, Richardson, and Sloan (2008), from 1985 to 2008, using historical weightings as benchmarks. Our results show that, in the post Reg FD period, the magnitude of investors’ (analysts’) mis-weightings has decreased (increased), and the differences between analysts’ and investors’ mis-weightings have become smaller. Overall, these results suggest that financial analysts’ information advantages over investors declined after Reg FD took effect, and that investors consequently are less biased in assessing the persistence of the cash flow components of earnings following the implementation of Reg FD.     

Analyst Impartiality and Investment Banking Relationships

This study examines whether investment banking ties influence the speed with which analysts convey unfavorable news. We hypothesize that affiliated analysts have incentives to respond promptly to good news but prefer not to issue bad news about client companies. Using duration models of the time between an equity issue and the first downgrade, we find affiliated analysts are slower to downgrade from Buy and Hold recommendations and significantly faster to upgrade from Hold recommendations, in both within‐analyst and within‐issuer tests. We also find affiliated analysts issue recommendations sooner and more frequently after an offering than unaffiliated analysts, and that unaffiliated analysts are more likely than affiliated analysts to drop coverage of sample firms. Our findings indicate that banking ties increase analysts' reluctance to reveal negative news, and that reform efforts must carefully consider the incentives of affiliated and unaffiliated analysts to initiate coverage and convey the results of their research.     

Selective disclosure and the role of Form 8-K in the post-Reg FD era

We investigate the impact of Form 8-K filings on cross-firm differences in analysts’ private or idiosyncratic information in the post-Reg FD era. Using firms’ connections to the investment community to identify the likelihood of selective disclosure, we document differences in analysts’ idiosyncratic information arising from selective disclosure before 8-K filings. While filings of 8-Ks pursuant to Reg FD attenuate the link between connections and analysts’ idiosyncratic information, they do so only after selective disclosures have already resulted in some analysts having better private information. In addition, the connections continue to facilitate private information search after the filings of non-Reg FD-specific 8-Ks.     

Favorable versus Unfavorable Recommendations: The Impact on Analyst Access to Management-Provided Information

This study examines recent regulatory and practitioner concerns that managers provide more (less) information to analysts with more (less) favorable stock recommendations. We examine the relative forecast accuracy of analysts before and after a recommendation issuance under the assumption that increases (decreases) in management‐provided information will increase (decrease) analysts' relative forecast accuracy. We find that analysts issuing more favorable recommendations experience a greater increase in their relative forecast accuracy compared with analysts with less favorable recommendations. Additional tests on the change in frequency with which analysts issue forecasts independent of or in conjunction with other analysts after their recommendation change yield corroborating results. In addition, we find that the greater increase in relative accuracy for analysts with more favorable recommendations exists prior to the passage of Regulation FD but not after. The combined results are consistent with analysts receiving relatively more management‐provided information following the issuance of more favorable recommendations.     

Analyzing the Analysts: Career Concerns and Biased Earnings Forecasts

We examine security analysts' career concerns by relating their earnings forecasts to job separations. Relatively accurate forecasters are more likely to experience favorable career outcomes like moving up to a high-status brokerage house. Controlling for accuracy, analysts who are optimistic relative to the consensus are more likely to experience favorable job separations. For analysts who cover stocks underwritten by their houses, job separations depend less on accuracy and more on optimism. Job separations were less sensitive to accuracy and more sensitive to optimism during the recent stock market mania. Brokerage houses apparently reward optimistic analysts who promote stocks.     

Short selling and the independence of business-related analysts: Evidence from an emerging market

This paper investigates whether short-sale deregulation improves analysts' independence in an emerging market where conventional mechanisms mitigating conflicts of interest are either ineffective or absent. Short selling reduces the effectiveness of analysts' favourable opinions in creating or sustaining overvalued stock prices, thus decreasing the incentives of institutional clients of brokerages to exert pressure on related analysts to initiate coverage and issue biased opinions. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find strong evidence that stocks that are eligible for short sales experience a greater reduction in coverage by related analysts than stocks that are ineligible for short sales. When covered firms become eligible for short sales, the quality of forecasts and recommendations issued by related analysts improves considerably. Further analyses show that shortable firms with a significant reduction in related analysts' coverage are more likely to underperform and to experience stock price crashes in the future. Altogether, our results are consistent with short selling effectively restoring related analysts' independence in emerging markets.     

Does Regulation Fair Disclosure affect analysts’ forecast performance? The case of restructuring firms

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how the enactment of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg. FD) influences analysts?? forecast characteristics for restructuring firms. The Reg. FD requires all firms disseminate material information not only to some institutional investors and certain financial analysts, but to all market participants simultaneously. We expect that the regulatory effect of Reg. FD on financial analysts?? forecast performance would be pronounced because of uncertain earnings signals and information complexity produced by restructuring activities. Particularly, we examine how the enactment of Reg. FD affects the relationship between analysts?? earnings forecast attributes and the occurrence and magnitude of restructuring charges. Our general finding is that analysts?? forecast errors and forecast dispersion have declined in the post-FD period for restructuring firms. However, such an impact cannot be persistent with an increase in the relative magnitude of restructuring charges, the proxy for restructuring complexity. This study provides additional evidence that Reg. FD has limited private information, and attempts to provide all users with the same access to information within the context of firms reporting restructuring charges.     

Analyst Pessimism and Forecast Timing

In this study, we show that on average relatively pessimistic analysts tend to reveal their earnings forecasts later than other analysts. Further, we find this forecast timing effect explains a substantial proportion of the well‐known decrease in consensus analyst forecast optimism over the forecast period prior to earnings announcements, which helps explain why analysts’ longer term earnings forecasts are more optimistically biased than their shorter term forecasts. We extend the theory of analyst self‐selection regarding their coverage decisions to argue that analysts with a relatively pessimistic view–compared to other analysts–are more reluctant to issue their earnings forecasts, with the result that they tend to defer revealing their earnings forecasts until later in the forecasting period than other analysts.