Profit warning and its association with stock price informativeness: experimental analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 209-230
Author(s):  
Adel Almasarwah ◽  
Mohammad Almaharmeh ◽  
Ahmed M. Al Omush ◽  
Adel Sarea

Purpose This study investigates the nature of the association between profit warnings and stock price informativeness in the context of Jordan as an emerging country. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a large panel data set that related to stock price synchronicity and profit warnings percentages on the Amman Stock Exchange for the period spanning 2007–2018. Robust regression was used as a parametric test. This enabled us to obtain stronger results that fall in line with our prediction that a profit warning encourages firm investors to collect and process more firm-specific information than common market information. Findings Our findings show a significant positive effect of profit warnings on the amount of firm-specific information incorporated into stock price, which means that the greater the percentage of profit warnings the more likely that more firm-specific information will be incorporated in stock price synchronicity. In addition, corporate governance characteristics (moderating variables) significantly increase the level of the relationship between profit warnings and stock price synchronicity. Practical implications Our study results could be useful to investors, senior managers, and regulators in Jordanian firms, particularly in relation to decisions about enhancing the quality of financial statements. In addition, our results provide new evidence about the consequences of earnings announcements for information content and the informativeness of stock prices. Our methodology and evaluation of profit warnings may also demonstrate useful evidence for future researchers on profit warnings and stock price informativeness in developing economies, especially given that such evidence is scarce in developing economies. Originality/value This research is the first study of its kind on emerging markets, particularly in the Middle East. Moreover, entering the corporate governance variables as moderating variables to the robust regression was found to be more powerful than other regressions.

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 829-857 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hua Feng ◽  
Ahsan Habib ◽  
Gao liang Tian

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between aggressive tax planning and stock price synchronicity. Design/methodology/approach Employing the special institutional background of China, this study constructs tax aggressiveness and stock price synchronicity measures for a large sample of Chinese stocks spanning the period 2003–2015. The authors employ OLS regression as the baseline methodology, and a fixed effect model, the Fama–Macbeth method and GMM as sensitivity checks. Matched samples and difference-in-difference analyses are used to control for endogeneity. Findings The authors find a significant and positive association between aggressive tax planning and stock price synchronicity. Because material information about risky tax transactions tends to be hidden in various tax accruals accounts, aggressive tax strategies make financial statements less transparent, thereby, increasing information asymmetry and decreasing stock price informativeness. The authors also find that the firms engaging in aggressive tax planning exhibit relatively high corporate opacity. In addition, the authors find that improvements in the tax enforcement regime, ownership status and high-quality auditors all constrain the adverse effects of tax aggressiveness. Practical implications This study has important practical implications for China’s regulators, who are striving to reduce the tax burden of enterprises. It also helps investors to consider investment decisions more appropriately from a taxation perspective. Originality/value First, this paper contributes to the stock price efficiency literature by identifying the effect of a hitherto unexamined factor, namely, firm-level aggressive tax planning, on the efficiency of stock prices. Second, this study provides further empirical evidence to support the agency view of tax aggressiveness, and the informational interpretation of stock price synchronicity. Third, this study helps us better understand the effects of firm-level tax policy on firm-specific information capitalization in an environment where overall country-level investor protection is relatively weak.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andriansyah Andriansyah

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the real effects of primary and secondary equity markets on the post-issue operating performance of initial public offering (IPO) firms. Design/methodology/approach The author utilizes the intended use of proceeds as a proxy variable for the primary market and the investment-to-price sensitivity and the informativeness of stock prices as alternative proxy variables for the secondary market. The compositional data, and non-parametric quantile regressions which are more robust to outliers than standard least square regressions, are employed for Indonesian equity market over the period of 1999-2013. Findings While confirming that firm operating performance can be explained by the firm’s motivation to go public, the author also shows that the operating performance is positively affected by investment-to-price sensitivity and negatively affected by stock price informativeness. The stock prices affect investment decisions by the way that the more liquid a stock is, the more informative its price is, and the more relevant stock prices are in investment decisions. These findings still hold after controlling for ownership structure. Originality/value Departing from the existing literature, the author investigates the role of primary and secondary equity markets for firm performance in an integrated framework because both markets interact closely in reality. The author shows that public listed firms can benefit both from the capital-raising function of the primary market and from the informational role of the stock prices of the secondary market. A measure of stock price informativeness, 1−R2, however, must be understood in the context of thin trading in the sense that the level of liquidity affects the level of stock price informativeness.


2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-72
Author(s):  
Anita Todea

Abstract This paper examines the impact of financial literacy on stock price informativeness in a sample of firms from 20 countries. Using four measures of stock price informativeness, we find a significant relationship between higher financial literacy and higher stock price informativeness. The individual investors’ contribution regarding the incorporation of specific information into stock prices includes private information also and not mere specific information in the general sense. Financial knowledge is the key element that helps individual investors to incorporate specific information into stock prices.


2020 ◽  
pp. 031289622090767
Author(s):  
Yuyun Huang ◽  
Yuan George Shan ◽  
Joey W Yang

Using the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) mandate as a pseudo-natural experiment, we provide empirical evidence that reduction in information processing costs (IPC) leads to more informative stock price through two channels, the firm-specific information incorporation, and increased disclosures. We also find that younger firms with relatively shorter public disclosure history benefit more than older firms, supporting the conjecture that XBRL accelerates the information incorporation process and expedites market’s learning about younger firms faster. Our results are robust to alternative measures of price informativeness, individual batch tests, placebo tests, and potential bias from financial industry. JEL Classification: G14, M41, M48


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 593-605
Author(s):  
Muhammad Shahid Rasheed ◽  
Shahzad Kouser

Emerging markets usually have weaker legal and governance environment. The weaker enforcement of investor protection laws leads to a poor information environment. Using data of all the listed non-financial firms from Pakistan stock exchange (PSX), we document the relationship between corporate governance variables and stock price informativeness. The results from two-stage least squares (2SLS) reveal that controlling shareholders in the form of block holding plays an effective role in improving informativeness. Due to the presence of these block ownership, the institutional investors remain largely short term investors and act passively. This behavior of institutional investors encourages managers to extract more cash flows leading to higher synchronicity. These findings suggest market regulators develop such a corporate governance mechanism that not only ensures investor protection but also advise firms to reduce information asymmetry by better disclosure and transparency. More specifically, in the Pakistani context, traditional corporate governance mechanisms through board room regulations may not improve informativeness, and regulators need to regulate the ownership regulations, including family ownership and controlling shareholders.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Cheung ◽  
Scott Fung ◽  
Shih-Chuan Tsai

This paper provides new evidence on the relations between managerial and institutional ownerships and firm performance. These relations are found to be affected by firm’s stock price informativeness and corporate governance. Based on a sample of US firms from NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ between 1989 and 2006, we document three important findings. First, managerial ownership and firm future performance are non-linearly related; the positive relation is stronger for firms with less informative prices or more agency problems. This finding suggests that poor governance and uninformative price increase the importance of managerial value creation for their firms by improving internal governance. Second, institutional ownership has a significant positive impact on firm future performance, with larger impact for firms with less informative prices or good governance. However, institutional ownership, which reflects external monitoring, has a weaker positive effect compared to managerial ownership, which controls for internal governance. Third, the interaction between managerial ownership and institutional ownership has a significant positive impact on firm future performance, suggesting that there are synergistic effects of internal and external corporate governance mechanisms in improving firm value.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
William Ming Yan Cheung ◽  
Adrian Lei ◽  
Libin Tao

We study the relation between corporate governance, market liquidity and stock price informativeness. Firms with more informative stock prices are associated with larger transaction volume, larger bid-ask spread and better corporate governance. Thisliquidity-informativeness relation is significant for firms with high antitakeover provision (bad corporate governance). However, bid-ask spread is insignificantly associated withprice informativeness for firms with less antitakeover provision (good corporate governance). This supports that firm-specific return variation better measures stock price informativeness when firm has strong corporate governance framework. Our results suggest that (i) more (less) informed trading activities associated with weak (strong) corporate governance, and (ii) corporate governance explains the cross-sectional variation in information efficiency of stock prices. Our results are consistent with theories in financial market learning that investor learn from informed trading activities associated with weak governance firms and informative disclosure from strong governance firms.


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