Does the mandatory disclosure of audit information affect analysts' information acquisition?

This paper explores the effect of public information on analysts' information acquisition. By introducing the implementation of the Key Audit Matters (KAM) Disclosure Standards for China's firms cross-listed in Hong Kong in 2017, we present evidence that KAM disclosure reduces analysts' firm visits, which is an important channel of information acquisition. The effect is particularly pronounced for firms with audit partner rotation and low institutional ownership. KAM disclosure by industrial leaders has a spillover effect on analyst visits for peer firms. Disclosure also improves the frequency and quality of analysts' forecasts and firms' information environments, indicating that KAMs are informative and audit information is an important determinant of analysts' information acquisition. Our study reveals the real effect of KAM disclosure on analyst decisions, which may be of interest to regulators concerned with the mandatory disclosure of audit information and capital market efficiency.     

The brain gain of CFOs in China: The case of analyst forecasts

We study the impact of CFOs with foreign experience on analysts' forecast accuracy in emerging markets. Using a unique data set from China, we find that analysts' forecast accuracy increases when firms hire CFOs with foreign experience, confirming the brain gain effect of CFOs. Our results are robust after addressing potential endogeneity by introducing the propensity score matched (PSM) procedure and Heckman two-stage method. Channel analyses show that CFOs with foreign experience are related to decreased earnings management and a greater probability of hiring high-quality auditors, indicating that the improvement in financial reporting quality and information environment brought by returnee CFOs mainly drive our results. Further cross-section tests reveal that compared to firms with more external pressure, the positive effect of returnee CFOs on analysts' forecast accuracy is more pronounced among firms with fewer analyst coverage and belonging to less competitive industries. Returnee CFOs with foreign work experience exert a more significant impact on analysts' forecast accuracy than those with foreign study experience. Overall, we provide the first evidence on the brain gain of CFOs in terms of analyst forecasts.     

Accounting-based downside risk and expected stock returns: Evidence from China

We document that earnings downside risk contains information on firms' future operating performance and is positively associated with expected stock returns in Chinese stock markets, and the return predictability of earning downside risk mainly comes from its accrual downside risk component. The pricing of earnings downside risk is especially evident among firms with more transparent information environment and stronger governance efficacy, such as large firms, non-high-tech firms, old firms, and firms with high analyst coverage. Lastly, we show that aggregated earnings downside risk and its components at the market level are all significantly and positively associated with subsequent stock market returns, which is consistent with the notion that the accounting-based downside risk measures contain information about future macroeconomic conditions.     

Causal language intensity in performance commentary and financial analyst behaviour

We use automated techniques to measure causal reasoning on earnings‐related financial outcomes of a large sample of MD&A sections of US firms and examine the intensity of causal language in that context against extent of analyst following and against properties of analysts’ earnings forecasts. We find a positive and significant association between a firm's causal reasoning intensity and analyst following and analyst earnings forecast accuracy respectively. Correspondingly, analysts’ earnings forecast dispersion is negatively and significantly associated with causal reasoning intensity. These results suggest that causal reasoning intensity provides incremental information about the relationship between financial performance outcomes and its causes, thereby reducing financial analysts’ information processing and interpreting costs and lowering overall analyst information uncertainty. Additionally, we find that decreases in analyst following are followed by more causal reasoning on performance disclosure. We also find that firms with a considerable increase of causal disclosure especially attract new analysts who already cover many firms. Overall, our evidence of the relationship between causal reasoning intensity and properties of analyst behaviour is consistent with the proposition that causal reasoning is a generic narrative disclosure quality characteristic, able to provide incremental information to analysts and guide analysts' behaviour.     

Investor Sentiment and Corporate Disclosure

This paper investigates how firms react strategically to investor sentiment via their disclosure policies in an attempt to influence the sentiment‐induced biases in expectations. Proxying for sentiment using the Michigan Consumer Confidence Index, we show that during low‐sentiment periods, managers increase forecasts to “walk up” current estimates of future earnings over long horizons. In contrast, during periods of high sentiment, managers reduce their long‐horizon forecasting activity. Further, while there is an association between sentiment and the biases in analysts' estimates of future earnings, management disclosures vary with sentiment even after controlling for analyst pessimism, indicating that managers attempt to communicate with investors at large, and not just analysts. Our study provides evidence that firms' long‐horizon disclosure choices reflect managers' desire to maintain optimistic earnings valuations.     

The effects of operating cash flow disclosure on earnings comparability,analysts' forecasts,and firms’ investment decisions during the Pre-IFRS era

We examine the effects of the availability of operating cash flow (OCF) information disclosed by firms operating in 15 international countries during the pre-IFRS era on: (1) the comparability of these firms' disaggregated earnings to those of U.S. firms for equity valuation purposes, (2) the properties of analysts' earnings forecasts, and (3) the efficiency of firms' investment decisions. We find that the comparability of disaggregated earnings improves after company-disclosed OCF information is available. We also find decreases in analysts' forecast errors and dispersion and a decrease in firms’ tendency to over- or under-invest when they are predisposed to do so.     

The impact of abnormal real earnings management to meet earnings benchmarks on future operating performance

Motivated by agency conflicts of real earnings management (e.g., opportunistic and signalling perspectives), this study investigates the association between firms that manipulate their business operations to meet earnings benchmarks (i.e., zero earnings, last year's earnings) and subsequent operating performance. We examine the effects of the magnitude of real earnings management on firms' future performance for the period 2009 to 2015 for UK firms. Our analysis shows that the manipulation of operating activities such as sales, discretionary expenditures, and production costs to meet earnings benchmarks has a significantly positive consequence for firms' subsequent operating performance and signals firms' good future performance. We also find that firms that manipulate their operating activities in the absence of meeting earnings benchmarks experience a decline in their subsequent operating performance. The findings of this research lend support to our understanding of the process that management follows to evaluate costs and benefits of real earnings management.     

Voluntary disclosure practices by foreign firms cross-listed in the United States

This is one of the first large-scale studies to examine the voluntary disclosure practices of foreign firms cross-listed in the United States. We proxy for voluntary disclosure using three attributes of firms’ management earnings guidance: (1) the likelihood of issuance; (2) the frequency of earnings guidance; and (3) a guidance quality measure. After first establishing that market participants view these firms’ disclosures as credible and economically important (i.e., the disclosures are negatively related to analyst forecast errors and the implied cost of equity capital), we compare cross-listed firms’ disclosure practices with comparable US firms and explore variations in disclosure practices among cross-listed firms. We find that cross-listed firms issue less frequent and lower quality management earnings guidance than comparable US firms. We further show that the gap between US and cross-listed firms widened after passage of Regulation FD, a regulation which induced greater public disclosure of firm-specific information. Focusing on the sample of cross-listing firms, we show that firms from common-law countries disclose more than firms from code-law countries. Finally, our results indicate that cross-listed firms that do not list on an organized US exchange provide more frequent and higher quality disclosure than those that do list on organized exchanges.     

Do Managers Use Meeting Analyst Forecasts to Signal Private Information? Evidence from Patent Citations

This study examines whether firms manage earnings to meet analyst forecasts to signal superior future performance. Prior research finds that firms use earnings management to just meet analyst forecasts and that these firms have a positive association with future performance (Bartov et al., 2002). There are two potential explanations for the positive association – signaling and attaining benefits that allow for better future performance (i.e., the real benefits explanation). Prior studies cannot provide evidence of signaling because they do not control for the real benefits explanation. Our research design enables us to control for the real benefits explanation because we can identify potential signaling firms within the sample of firms that just meet analyst forecasts. We use a unique database from the National Bureau of Economic Research to construct a proxy for the manager's belief about future firm value due to patents. We find that firms with more patent citations are more likely to just meet the analyst forecast and manage earnings to achieve this goal. We also find firms that just meet analyst forecasts with more patent citations have significantly better performance than firms with fewer patent citations, which is consistent with signaling and not the real benefits explanation.     

Does Regulation FD work? Evidence from analysts' reliance on public disclosure

We examine how Regulation FD changed analysts' reliance on firms' public disclosure. Regulation FD is associated with a stronger analyst response to earnings announcements, management forecasts and conference calls—that is, analysts respond to these events more quickly, more frequently and with larger forecast revisions after FD. Further, following public disclosure, the decline in analyst forecast dispersion and forecast error accelerates after FD. We find no such changes either for foreign ADR firms or around several confounding events. Overall, Regulation FD levels the playing field between the analysts and individual investors, thereby promoting “fair game” property of the market.     

Capital market consequences of cultural influences on earnings: The case of cross-listed firms in the U.S. stock market

We examine whether market reactions to earnings announcements vary according to differences in the cultural values of firms' countries of origin in the case of cross-listed firms in the U.S. stock market. To deal with time-varying volatility returns, market reactions are determined using the market model adjusted for GARCH. We also apply the Fama-French three factor model to determine market reactions. Using the dynamic panel generalized method of moments estimator, we analyze 5562 firm-year observations from 30 countries over the period 2000–2014. We find that market reactions to the earnings announcements of cross-listed firms are significantly negatively (positively) associated with firms’ home countries characterized by the culturally- based accounting values of conservatism (optimism) and secrecy (transparency). Overall, the results suggest that the informal institutional influences of culture relating to the financial performance of cross-listed firms are priced by the U.S. stock market.     

The supply of analysts and earnings forecasts

Using a unique set of hand-collected data, this study examines whether a larger supply of prospective analysts leads to existing financial analysts' higher earnings forecast accuracy. We analyze the effect of the analyst supply proxied by the number of universities and the number of finance and economics universities located in the same city as the headquarters of brokerage firms. Our findings suggest that brokerage firms located closer to a larger supply of potential analyst candidates are associated with higher analyst forecast accuracy, as observed by a lower forecast error. We further find that the degree of employed analysts' effort acts as a mediator between the supply of prospective analysts and the accuracy of their earnings forecasts.     

Audit committee financial expertise and properties of analyst earnings forecasts

An important role of financial accounting information is to aid financial statement users in forming expectations about the firm's future earnings. Prior research finds that accounting financial expertise of the audit committee is associated with higher financial reporting quality. We extend this literature by examining the association between audit committee financial expertise and analysts' ability to anticipate future earnings. We find a significant association between accounting financial expertise on the audit committee and analyst earnings forecasts that are more accurate and less dispersed. In contrast, we do not find a significant association between non-accounting financial expertise (i.e., supervisory expertise) and forecast accuracy or forecast dispersion. These findings contribute to our understanding of the benefits of accounting expertise in audit committees by demonstrating an association between accounting financial expertise and improvements in analyst earnings forecasts.     

Sell-side analyst heterogeneity and insider trading

This study explores insider trading patterns under different earnings surprises. After controlling for stock market liquidity and earnings announcements returns, we show that insiders sell more aggressively depending on the heterogeneity of analysts whose EPS forecasts are met or beaten to camouflage their trades. Specifically, insiders sell more shares of their company sooner after the publication of earnings when top analysts' forecasts are met or beaten. Consistent with the informed trading literature, insiders strategically select these moments because the stock price impact is low and the legal scrutiny of their trades is minimal. To support this result, we employ an exogenous drop in firms' analyst coverage due to the closure or merger of brokerage houses. Furthermore, in line with the camouflage incentives, by selling after top analysts' forecasts are met or beaten, stock prices adjust slowly to insider trades. Finally, we show that the incentives of insiders to hide their trades are concentrated in opportunistic insiders and members of the top management team, who are more likely to bear the costs of selling shares after positive news.     

Performance commitments and the properties of analyst earnings forecasts: Evidence from Chinese reverse merger firms

We investigate whether the performance commitments in Chinese reverse merger (RM) transactions affect the properties of analyst earnings forecasts. All RM firms in China are required to make performance commitments for a limited number of years after being publicly listed. As performance commitment is an important piece of public information, it can influence analysts' understanding of firms and their efforts to forecast earnings. Using manually assembled information on RM transactions, we find that, in comparison to the control firms, RM firms exhibit an increase in analyst forecast error and dispersion after the end of performance commitment. This effect is more pronounced in firms with lower levels of information transparency. We also document that the public information contents of analyst forecasts decrease and forecast revisions increase in the post-commitment period, while the private information content of analyst forecasts and the number of their firm visits remain unchanged. Overall, our findings suggest that analysts rely greatly on public information; they have important implications for academics and policymakers in understanding how performance commitments in RM transactions affect the market information environment.     

A comparison of buy‐side and sell‐side analysts

There is very little research on the topic of buy-side analyst performance, and that which does exist yields mixed results. We use a large sample from both the buy-side and the sell-side and report several new results. First, while the contemporaneous returns to portfolios based on sell-side recommendations are positive, the returns for buy-side analysts, proxied by changes in institutional holdings, are negative. Second, the buy-side analysts' underperformance is accentuated when they trade against sell-side analysts' recommendations. Third, abnormal returns positively relate to both the portfolio size and the portfolio turnover of buy-side analysts' institutions, suggesting that large institutions employ superior analysts and that superior analysts frequently change their recommendations. Abnormal returns are also positively related to buy-side portfolios with stocks that have higher analyst coverage, greater institutional holding, and lower earnings forecast dispersion. Fourth, there is substantial persistence in buy-side performance, but even the top decile performs poorly. These findings suggest that sell-side analysts still outperform buy-side analysts despite the severe conflicts of interest documented in the literature.     

Mandatory disclosure of comment letters and analysts' forecasts

Comment letters (CLs) have been adopted as the main supervision mechanism for information disclosure by the two main Chinese stock exchanges since 2013. Both CLs and firms' responses have been publicly disclosed since the end of 2014. Using nonfinancial listed firms from 2013 to 2019 as our sample, we investigate the impact of CLs and their mandatory disclosure on analysts' forecast quality. The results show that, in the pre-disclosure period, there is no significant relation between CLs and analysts' forecast quality. However, in the post-disclosure period, CLs are positively (negatively) correlated with analysts' forecast accuracy (optimism). The quality of analysts' forecasts is much higher when CLs contain more questions. In addition, the impact of CLs is larger for samples with a lower percentage of star analysts or samples with higher earnings volatility. CL recipients tend to disclose more information on their internal and external risks, which can offer additional information to analysts.     

Are All Security Analysts Equal?

We examine the extent to which security analysts are homogeneous in their effect on firm valuation as measured by Tobin's Q. Earlier research documents a significant and positive relation between analyst coverage and firm valuation. We identify three classes of equity analysts and examine their differential effect on firm valuation associated with their coverage and their information production. We find that equity analysts are not homogeneous in their effect on firm valuation. The presence of analysts at national securities firms have the strongest effect on firm valuation followed by analysts at regional securities firms and finally analysts at nonbrokerage, or research, firms. We attribute this result to the differential monitoring and information dissemination function rendered by the analysts. Information produced by analysts, however, does not share the same credibility. Specifically, we find brokerage firms' buy recommendations are discounted by the market and have a weak effect on firm valuation. The results can be supported by arguments that brokerage firm analysts' recommendations are contaminated by their firms' investment banking relations with corporations.     

Revaluations of fixed assets and future firm performance: Evidence from the UK

We find, as predicted, that upward revaluations of fixed assets by UK firms are significantly positively related to changes in future performance, measured by operating income and cash from operations, indicating revaluations reflect asset value changes. Current year revaluations (revaluation balances) also are significantly positively related to annual returns (prices). Relations between revaluations and future performance and prices are weaker for higher debt-to-equity ratio firms, indicating motivation affects how revaluations reflect asset value changes. The relations also are weaker for cross-listed firms and in a more volatile economic time period. Our inferences are robust to controlling for firms' acquisition activity.     

Do Publicly Signalled Earnings Management Incentives Affect Analyst Forecast Accuracy?

Using a panel of listed Australian firms for the years 1999–2007, this paper investigates whether analysts' forecast efficiency is improved by the occurrence of a publicly observable event, such as a CEO appointment, which signals a firm's earnings management incentives. Two supporting hypotheses are also tested: first, that CEO appointments are associated with income‐decreasing earnings management; and second, that analyst forecast errors increase with the level of earnings management present in current period financial statements. Consistent with prior literature, we find income‐decreasing earnings management in the year of CEO appointment. Earnings management, as a general phenomenon, is found to be significantly related to analyst forecast errors in the period in which the earnings management occurs. However, we present evidence that analyst forecasts for current year earnings are significantly more accurate with respect to earnings management in cases where a CEO is appointed during the current financial period.