• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.117-123
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• 2022

Purpose: This study investigates the relationship between earnings forecasts estimated from a cross-sectional earnings forecast model and firm characteristics such as firm size, sales volatility, and earnings volatility. Research design, data and methodology: The association between earnings forecasts and the aforementioned firm characteristics is examined using 214 firm-year observations with analyst following and 848 firm-year observations without analyst following for the period of 2011-2019. I estimate future earnings using a cross-sectional earnings forecast model, and then compare these model-based earnings forecasts with analysts' earnings forecasts in terms of forecast bias and forecast accuracy. The earnings forecast bias and accuracy are regressed on firm size, sales volatility, and earnings volatility. Results: For a sample with analyst following, I find that the model-based earnings forecasts are more accurate as the firm size is larger, whereas the analysts' earnings forecasts are less biased and more accurate as the firm size is larger. However, for a sample without analyst following, I find that the model-based earnings forecasts are more pessimistic and less accurate as firms' past earnings are more volatile. Conclusions: Although model-based earnings forecasts are useful for evaluating firms without analyst following, their accuracy depends on the firms' earnings volatility.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.91-98
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• 2019

Dividend policy is an important business decision and is considered a channel to communicate a firm's performance to shareholders. Given the empirical findings that earnings quality significantly affects financial analysts' forecasting activities, it is predicted that higher earnings quality would positively influence forecast accuracy. Specifically, it is expected that financial analysts would forecast dividends more accurately for firms with higher earning quality. Unlike the research on financial analysts' earnings forecasts was heavily conducted, there is little study about financial analysts' dividend forecasts. This paper examines the effect of earnings quality on financial analysts' dividend forecast accuracy. We use a sample of South Korean firms for the period of 2011-2015 for multivariate regression. Earnings quality is measured by accruals quality and performance-adjusted discretionary accruals followed by prior studies. We first compare the accuracy between dividend forecasts and earnings forecasts using t-test and Wilcoxon singed-rank test. It is confirmed that financial analysts' dividend forecasts are more accurate than earnings forecasts in Korea. We find that financial analysts' dividend forecasts are more accurate for firms with higher earnings quality. We also find that the result is still valid after controlling for the accuracy of financial analysts' earnings forecasts. This confirms that earnings quality positively affects financial analysts' dividend forecasts.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.8 no.11
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• pp.363-372
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• 2017

This study analyzed how management earnings forecasts would have an effect on future earnings quality. The analysis period of study was from 2003 till 2009 (ofrom 2004 till 2011) based on variables of interest (dependent variables) and the annual data from a total of 475 companies that publicly announced manager's operating earnings forecasts among securities listing companies were used for analysis. As a result, first, it appeared that the more optimistic the manager's earnings forecasts were for the current term, the lower the future earnings quality was. Second, it was found that the lower the accuracy of the manager's earnings forecasts was for the current term, the lower the future earnings quality was. Such findings suggest that management earnings forecasts will be used for determining future earnings quality.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.8
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• pp.647-658
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• 2021

Analysts' forecasts are important for providing useful guidance to investors, especially individual or small investors, and therefore it becomes critical to identify the elements which can potentially increase errors in analysts' forecasts. This study investigates potential factors which can lead to errors in forecasting by analysts, specifically in terms of the level and attributes of corporate earnings. Utilizing a sample of firms listed on the Korean stock markets, this study provides evidence that firms with more volatile and unpredictable earnings feature less accurate analyst forecasts. This study fills a void in the literature by conducting empirical tests for earnings attributes in terms of volatility and unpredictability that could potentially undermine the forecast accuracy. The negative association between the quality of earnings and forecast accuracy is more pronounced for firms with negative net income values. Additional analysis demonstrates that forecast accuracy is significantly lower for the fourth quarter than for other fiscal quarters and that fourth quarter earnings tend to be more volatile and unpredictable. This study contributes to the literature by providing new empirical evidence regarding the comprehensive effects of earnings quality and level on analysts' forecasting accuracy and further suggests potential factors contributing to the fourth quarter anomaly in analyst forecasts in terms of earnings attributes.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.81-90
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• 2020

We examine the effects of the complexity of tax-related information on the issuance of analyst's pre-tax income forecast and its value relevance. If analysts respond adequately to the needs of investors, they are more likely to provide a pre-tax income forecast. The provision of a pre-tax income forecast may indicate analysts' confidence in assessing the quality of earnings. Thus, investors, in turn, would be more confident in the analysts' pre-tax income forecasts if analysts provide both pre-tax and earnings forecasts than only the latter. Using a sample of Korean listed companies for 2005-2014, we find that analysts are likely to provide an implicit tax forecast when the volatility of the effective tax rate is low and the book-tax differences are small. We also find that when analysts provide pre-tax and after tax income forecasts, the value relevance for unexpected earnings increases. These results indicate that analysts are likely to be interested in corporate tax information and the complexity of tax-related information affects the availability of implicit tax forecasts. Furthermore, this study provides empirical evidence that when analysts provide both pre-tax and after tax income forecasts, investors have more confidence in analysts' earnings forecasts, which results in greater investors' responses.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.41-48
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• 2019

Purpose - This study investigates whether financial analysts consider the intangible investment implicit in selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenditures to forecast firms' future earnings. Research design, data, and methodology - Using 52,609 U.S. firm-year observations spanning 1984-2016, this study examines the association between the Intangible investment implicit in SG&A expenditures and properties of analysts' earnings forecasts. To estimate the Intangible investment of SG&A, I decompose SG&A excluding R&D and advertising expenditures into maintenance and investment components following Enache and Srivastava (2017). Results - The main results show that analysts' earnings forecast errors and dispersion in analysts' forecasts increase with the intangible investment derived from SG&A because the investment component of SG&A affects future earnings and the uncertainty of those earnings. However, these results are weakened in the wholesale and retail industries where firms have a higher level of investment component of SG&A. I attribute the weaker results to low R&D expenditures in those industries. Conclusion - This study indicates that financial analysts incorporate the intangible investment of SG&A into their earnings forecasts differently across firms and industries. Furthermore, this study supports the argument for the separate reporting of the investment nature of SG&A from other operating expenses such as maintenance nature of SG&A.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.31-62
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• 2010

This paper analyzes empirically how analysts' forecasts affected by ownership structure. This study examine a sample of 1,037~1,629 the analysts' forecasts of firms registered in Korean Stock Exchange in the period from 2000 to 2006. The empirical results are summarized as follows. First, from the analysis, companies which have higher major shareholder's holdings tend to increase earnings forecast errors and earnings forecast accuracy. Meanwhile, companies which have higher institution shareholder's holdings tend to decrease earnings forecast errors and earnings forecast accuracy. This result is in line with the view of previous works that companies with higher major shareholder's holdings look towards more of analysts' optimistic forecasts in order to maintain friendly relations with major shareholders. Because of analysts' private information use from major shareholders, earnings forecast accuracy is higher in high major shareholder's holdings firm than in high institution shareholder's holdings it. Second, this analysis is whether the minimal required selection condition of outside directors, audit committee adoption and audit quality affect the relation between ownership structure and analysts' forecasts. This result is that variables related corporate governance do not affect statically the relation between ownership structure and analysts' forecasts. The meanings of this paper is to suggest the positive relations between ownership structure and analysts' forecasts. After this, if analysts will notice forecasts of more many firms, capital market will be more efficient and this field works are plentiful. Also it will need monitoring systems not to distort market efficiency by analysts' dishonest forecasts.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.207-215
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• 2018

In this study, targeting KOSPI and KOSDAQ listed companies, the relationship between the abnormal investment of companies and analyst earnings forecasts was empirically analyzed. The analysis period of this study spanned from 2003 to 2015 (with that of dependent variables spanning from 2004 to 2016) based on the variables of interest, and among the companies whose earnings per share forecasts were announced by financial analysts, the final sample of 4,917 companies/year that meets the research condition was selected as the target analysis. The results of the empirical analysis are as follows. First, it turned out that the more total abnormal investment, abnormal R&D and abnormal CAPEX investment, the more accurate were analyst earnings forecasts. Second, the more total abnormal investment, abnormal R&D, abnormal CAPEX investment, the more pessimistic analyst earnings forecasts tended to be. Further analysis has shown that these results came more from over investment groups than under investment groups. The results of this study are expected to make additional contributions to the existing studies in that the abnormal investment is considered as a determinant of analyst earnings forecasts.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.137-155
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• 2018

It has been reported that there is a significant positive relationship between the unexpected earnings on the earnings announcement date and the cumulative abnormal returns following the earnings announcement date. This study investigates whether the results of prior studies are because the public announcement of shareholders' meeting date was selected as the event date instead of either the preliminary earnings disclosure date or the profit/loss change announcement date. The results of this study are as follows. First, post-earnings-announcement drift(PEAD) occurs when unexpected earnings were computed based on the prior period earnings and the public announcement of the shareholders' meeting date as the profit disclosure date. Second, when analyzing the PEAD with the unexpected earnings calculated using the financial analysts' forecasts, no PEAD has been found both on the date of the shareholders' meeting and the earlier date of the preliminary earnings disclosure, profit/loss change announcement, or the public announcement of the shareholders' meeting. Foster et al. (1984) analyze the PEAD using time series model and earnings forecasting model and suggest that the PEAD appears only in the time series model. In this study, too, in the case of using analysts' profit forecasts, the lack of the PEAD shows that the PEAD can be changed according to the method of measuring the unexpected earnings.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.105-109
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• 2017

This paper examines the effect of the analysts' earnings forecast revisions on stock price after the dividend announcement of the firms has been released. We show that the analysts' upward revisions on earnings forecasts are followed by the positive cumulative abnormal return. We also investigate the signalling effect and the confirmation effect with respect to the effect of the dividend announcement and the earnings forecast revisions on stock price. The test results show that the confirmation effect is stronger than the signalling effect. That is, the investors react only when the analysts' forecasts coincide with the preceding dividend announcement.