Separating Information About Cash Flows from Information About Risk in Losses

Prior literature interprets the weak earnings response coefficient (ERC) of accounting losses as a manifestation either of lack of forward-looking information in losses or of market mispricing of losses. Based on return decomposition theory, I predict that losses contain information not only about future cash flows (i.e., cash flow news) but also, about risk (i.e., expected returns and discount rate news). However, these informational components have offsetting valuation effects, resulting in a muted ERC. Consistent with the prediction, I show that, after controlling for information about risk (mainly expected returns), the ERC of losses becomes statistically significant with more negative returns for larger losses when returns are measured either annually or around earnings announcements. Moreover, loss firms will continue to have poor future earnings and operating cash flows, and larger losses are associated with more negative analyst forecast revisions in the loss-reporting year. I also document that losses provide more negative cash flow information when they are not because of research and development expensing, when they trigger operational curtailments, and when they are less likely to reverse to profits. Further tests confirm the robustness of my findings to considering future return drifts/reversals, alternative proxies for expected returns and discount rate news, alternative test portfolios, and alternative model specifications. Overall, my paper provides new insights into the information content of losses. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting.

Stock Market Returns and GDP News

What is the link between stock returns and news about economic growth? Using consensus forecasts from the Philadelphia Fed’s Survey of Professional Forecasters, I find that the univariate association between stock returns and gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast surprises is indistinguishable from zero. Although consistent with prior macro-finance research, this phenomenon is intriguing if one believes that the stock market should move in sync with the economy. I consider two non–mutually exclusive hypotheses for this puzzling phenomenon. The first hypothesis is that GDP growth forecast surprises are correlated with offsetting cash flow news and discount rate news. The second hypothesis is that GDP growth forecast surprises measure news about economic growth with noise. I extract a measure of market-level discount rate news using accounting data and find evidence consistent with the hypothesis of offsetting value-relevant news. Overall, this article makes an important step toward resolving evidence of a disconnect between stock market returns and news about economic growth. More broadly, this article illustrates how accounting constructs and methods can be applied to inform macro-finance questions.

Reexamination of Whether Accrual Quality Is a Price Factor

In this study we investigate whether accrual quality is a factor in capital asset pricing. Our analysis consists of two parts. First, we use a panel data regression that controls for cross-section fixed effects to implement the second stage of the Fama-MacBeth regression (Petersen 2009). In the second part, we use the Campbell (1991) return decomposition and vector autoregressive model (VAR) to decompose the two-stage cross-sectional regressions. This allows us to investigate whether accrual quality is a priced factor in terms of the three components of the return, which include one-period expected return, cash flow news and discount-rate news.

Who Reacts to News?

We show that the positive relation between firm-level cash-flow news and institutional ownership documented by [Cohen et al., Journal of Financial Economics 66, 409–462.] is mostly driven by short-horizon investors. Short-term institutions trade to incorporate cash-flow related information into prices and potentially reduce under-reaction to cash-flow news. In contrast, long-term institutions are more sensitive to discount-rate news, consistent with the idea that their strategy is to realize the long-term expected returns and that they care more about changes in their opportunity set. Our results support the premise that short- and long-horizon institutions are potentially trading with each other based on their opposing preferences for news.

Coskewness Risk Decomposition, Covariation Risk, and Intertemporal Asset Pricing

We develop an intertemporal asset pricing model where cash-flow news, discount-rate news, and their second moments are priced by the market. This model generalizes the market-return decomposition framework, showing that intertemporal considerations imply a decomposition of squared market returns (coskewness risk). Our model accounts for 68% of the return variation across portfolios sorted by size, book-to-market ratio, momentum, investment, and profitability for a modern U.S. sample period. Further, our findings highlight the importance of covariation risk, that is, the risk of simultaneous unfavorable shocks to cash flows and discount rates, in understanding equity risk premia.

Foreign Currency Returns and Systematic Risks

We apply an empirical approximation of the intertemporal capital asset pricing model (ICAPM) to show that cross-sectional dispersion in currency returns can be rationalized by differences in currency excess returns’ sensitivities to the market return’s cash-flow news component. This finding echoes recent explanations of the value and growth stock market anomaly. The distinction between cash-flow news and discount-rate news is key to jointly explain average stock and currency returns. Our analysis reveals the presence of a common source of systematic risk in stock and foreign currency returns that is reflected in the market return’s cash-flow news component.