Author : Ramesh Narayana Chari
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 140 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (48 download)
Book Synopsis Analysts' Use of Accruals and Cash Flows in Forecasting Earnings by : Ramesh Narayana Chari
Download or read book Analysts' Use of Accruals and Cash Flows in Forecasting Earnings written by Ramesh Narayana Chari and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This research investigates whether financial analysts fully incorporate the information contained in accrual and cash flow components of current earnings when forecasting future earnings. I present evidence that analysts fail to fully incorporate the implications of these components for earnings persistence in their forecasts. Analysts' appear to ignore information in past earnings to a greater extent when the magnitude of accruals in prior year earnings is large relative to cash flows. I find that information in these components can be used to improve analysts' forecasts. This improvement is most evident for firms which have a high incidence of accruals in prior year earnings. I demonstrate the economic significance of improving analysts' forecasts by implementing a trading strategy that predicts stock price changes. This trading strategy yields significantly positive risk-adjusted abnormal returns. These results suggest that analysts' forecasting inefficiency (see Mendenhall, 1991) is potentially rooted in their misperceptions about the implications of accruals and cash flows for earnings persistence. These findings are useful to accounting standard-setters and to capital markets research that uses analysts' forecasts to proxy for earnings expectations.