1. Chapter 5: The Information Approach to Decision Making

2. Overview This chapter answers the question:
Do security market prices respond to accounting information?
A number of studies were completed to answer this question
Ball and Brown study from 1968

3. Overview Cont’d
The information approach is the equating of usefulness to information content
Investors want to make their own predictions rather than have accountants do it for them
Information is useful if it leads investors to change their beliefs and actions
The degree of usefulness can be measured by the extent of volume or price change following the release of information

4. Does Disclosure Matter
Does releasing lots of information help stakeholders make more informed decisions and help to better gage the value of the firm? Or is it viewed as unreliable since management is producing the data?
Are there dangers of disclosure?

5. Decision Making
Deals with regulation standards on environmental disclosure
Most owners use information about environmental disclosures to make decisions
The media plays a critical role to convey non-financial information

6. Amount of Disclosure
Convergence within industries to disclose certain trends
Canada faces less impact than other countries such as Germany and France
What is the ideal level of disclosure?

7. Reasons for Market Response
Consider the following predictions about investor behaviour in response to financial statement information:
1. Investors have prior beliefs about a firm’s future performance

8. Reasons for Market Response Cont’d
2. When the current period’s net income is released, some investors will decide to become more informed by analyzing the income number
3. Investors who have revised their beliefs about future firm performance upwards, will buy the firm’s shares at their current market price
4. Expect to observe the volume of shares traded to increase when the firm reports its net income

9. Reasons for Market Response Cont’d
A study was completed by Beaver, Clarke and Wright which examined trading volume reaction
Found a dramatic increase in trading volume during the week that earnings announcements were released

10. Finding the Market Response
Efficient markets theory implies that the market will react quickly to new information
The good or bad news in reported net income is evaluated relative to what investors expected
There are always many events taking place that affect a firm’s share volume and price

11. Separating Market-Wide and Firm-Specific Factors
Equation of the market model:
Rjt= αj + βJRMt+εjt
Rjt = Return on firm j’s shares for period t
RMt = Return on market portfolio for period t
εjt = firm specific return on j’s shares

12. Separating Market-Wide and Firm-Specific Factors Cont’d
Ror this equation researchers obtain past data on Rjt and RMt
Then use regression analysis to estimate the coefficients of the model
For example suppose:
αj =
βJ = 0.80

13. Separating Market-Wide and Firm-Specific Factors Cont’d
The researcher must now consult the financial media to identify the day of the firm’s current earnings announcement
Call this day “0”
Suppose for this day the return on the Dow Jones Industrial Index was 0.001

14. Separating Market-Wide and Firm-Specific Factors Cont’d
Next the estimated market model for firm j is used to predict the return on firm j’s shares for that day
Expected return = (0.80 x 0.001) =

15. Separating Market-Wide and Firm-Specific Factors Cont’d
Assume the actual return on firm j’s shares for day 0 is
The difference between actual and expected is (εjt )
This number is an estimate of the abnormal, or firm-specific, return on firm j’s shares for that day

16. Separating Market-Wide and Firm-Specific Factors Cont’d
Graphical illustration of the market model for firm j for period t

17. Comparing Returns and Income
We can now compare the abnormal share return on day 0 as calculated above with the unexpected component of the firm’s current reported net income
If this unexpected net income is good news, then given securities market efficiency, a positive abnormal share return gives evidence that investors, on average, are reacting favourably to the unexpected good news in earnings

18. Comparing Returns and Income Cont’d
Difficulties with the methodology:
Other firm-specific information is frequently released around the time as a firm’s earnings announcement
The firm’s beta is an estimation

19. Ball and Brown Study Cont.
Ball and Brown conducted the study in 1968
The study was conducted on a sample of 261 NYSE firms in attempt to determine market price response to earnings information

20. Ball and Brown Study
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21. B&B - Methodology
They determined abnormal return over expected return and compared it to good income performance (GN) or bad income performance (BN) via a performance proxy i.e. last year’s earnings compared to this year’s earnings
Observed results over a narrow window of one month and a wide window of 18 months

22. B&B - Results
Both narrow and wide windows related good news to positive returns and bad news to negative returns
Noticed that when using the wide window, the price of shares with positive income news were already increasing prior to GN release
Study suggests that 85-90% of information was already built into price by the time earnings were announced

23. B&B - Results

24. B&B - Outcomes
Since both wide and narrow windows related good news with positive price changes and vice versa with bad news we can conclude that income news is only correlated with price change, it does not cause the change
Beaver, Clarke and Wright in 1979 extended the study to examine the effects of the magnitude of unexpected earnings and concluded that greater unexpected earnings were correlated with greater market response

25. Earnings Response Coefficients
From the BB study we can see that on average good news (“GN”) firms enjoyed abnormal returns and that bad news (“BN”) firms showed negative returns
Why does the market respond more strongly to good or bad news in earnings reports for some firms than for others?
With the answer to this, accountants can improve their understanding of how information is useful to investors and in turn prepare more useful financial statements

26. Earnings Response Coefficients Cont’d
Earnings Response Coefficient – measures the extent of a security’s abnormal market return in response to the unexpected component of reported earnings of the firm issuing that security
ERC = Abnormal Share Return / Unexpected Earnings for Period
Measures abnormal return per dollar of abnormal earnings

27. Reasons for Differential Market Response
Beta
Capital Structure
Earnings Quality
Growth Opportunities
The Similarity of Investor Expectations
The Informativeness of Price

28. Beta
Recall: Beta measures the co-movement between changes in the price of a security and changes in the market value of the market portfolio
The riskier future returns are the lower investors’ reactions to a given amount of unexpected earnings will be
Higher beta securities generally have lower ERC’s

29. Capital Structure
Increases in earnings add strength and safety to bonds and other outstanding debt so much of the GN in earnings goes to the debt holders
Highly levered firms generally have lower ERC’s

30. Earnings Quality
Recall: Quality of earnings is defined by the magnitude of the diagonal probabilities of the associated information system
Thus the higher the probabilities are the higher the ERC will be because investors are better able to infer future firm performance from today's performance
Problem: information system probabilities are not directly observable
Solution: Infer earnings quality by the magnitude of analysts' earnings forecast revision announcement

31. Earnings Quality Cont’d
Why do analysts adjust estimates more for some firms than others?
Earnings persistance
Permanent, expected to persist indefinately
Transitory, affecting earnings in current year but not future years
Price irrelevant, persistence of zero
In effect there are three ERC's each of which could be present in the same income statement
Investors should attempt to identify the different types separately and assign different ERC's to each rather than trying to estimate an average

32. Earnings Persistence Example
Assess the earnings persistence for the following events (Permanent, Transitory or Price irrelevant):
1. Unanticipated gain from disposal of equipment
2. A new technology is developed which is expected to increase profits by 5% in perpetuity
3. The firm capitalizes a lot of organization costs

33. Earnings Persistence Example
Assess the earnings persistence for the following events (Permanent, Transitory or Price irrelevant):
1. Unanticipated gain from disposal of equipment - Transitory
2. A new technology is developed which is expected to increase profits by 5% in perpetuity - Permanent
3. The firm capitalizes a lot of organization costs - Price irrelevant - assuming organizational costs have no salvage value

34. Earnings Quality Cont’d
Second dimension of earnings quality is accruals quality
Net Income = Cash Flow from Operations +/- Net Accruals
Accruals include changes in non-cash working capital accounts (AR, AFDA, AP, inventories etc.)
High quality - accruals show up as cash flow the next period
Ex. If AR is $1,000 and AFDA is $100 and $900 is collected the next period, the accruals are considered high quality

35. Testing Accrual Quality
DeChow and Dichev
Δ WCt = b0 + b1 CFOt-1 + b2 CFOt + b3 CFOt+1 + Et
Δ WC = change in net non-cash working capital t = period CFO = cash flow from operations in period t b = constants that are to be estimated E = residual error term (portion of total accruals not explained by cash from operations)

36. Testing Accrual Quality Cont’d
Δ WCt = b0 + b1 CFOt-1 + b2 CFOt + b3 CFOt+1 + Et
Data is used from several periods
High E indicates a poor match between current accruals and subsequent actual operating cash flow realizations
ERC and share price respond positively to accrual quality

37. Growth Opportunities
GN or BN may suggest future growth opportunities and hence a higher ERC
Ex. Recent projects display unexpected high profitability
To assess growth often P/E shops and portfolio managers analyze the ratio of market value of equity / book value of equity
The market will be aware of growth opportunities before they are recognized in income thus driving the stock price up

38. Growth Opportunities Cont’d
To better understand analyze a simple perpetuity:
Calculate the present value of a 10 % perpetuity: 1/10% = $10
Now assume the same perpetuity will grow by 5% per year: 1/(10%-5%) = $20
Clearly the value increases when growth opportunities are introduced
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39. Similarities of Investor Expectation
Each investor will have a different expectations based on the amount of available information to them and their abilities to comprehend it
However these differences are reduced since many investors draw their information from similar sources – analyst consensus forecasts etc.
Depending on expectations they will interpret earnings news as GN or BN but since most expectations are similar they will generally have the same interpretation of the news
The more similar the expectations are the greater the effect will be on the ERC

40. The Informativeness of Price
Market price itself is partially informative about the future value of the firm (leads)
Market price includes all publicly known information about the firm
A more informative share price implies the market anticipates changes in earnings power sooner
The more informative the price the less informative earnings releases will be and hence the firm will have a lower ERC

41. Reasons for Differential Market Response
An increase in the following factors will lead to:
Effect on ERC
Beta
Lower
Capital Structure
Earnings Quality
Higher
Growth Opportunities
Similarity of Investor Expectation
The Informativeness of Price
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42. Questions Assess the impact on the firm’s ERC:
A firm’s beta increases from 1 to 2.3
A firm pays off 20% of their debt
The firms quality of earnings falls
The return on recent projects that the firm has been taking on have been experiencing lower than historical projects

43. Questions Cont’d Assess the impact on the firm’s ERC:
5. Investors expectations become more similar
6. Due to improved news coverage the price becomes more informed

44. Implications of ERC Research
Improved understanding of market responses allows accountants to create and provide more useful information to investors
Capital structure – highly levered firms should have lots of detail disclosing the nature and extent of all liabilities
Growth – the MD&A enables management to communicate growth prospects
Components of net income are important because they allows investors to better interpret the earnings number
Rob

45. Implications of ERC Research Cont’d
IAS 1 prohibits the use of extraordinary items in the income statement and requires separate disclosure in the notes for:
Material write-downs and reversals thereof
Restructuring provisions
Gains and losses on provisions
Other low-persistent items
This puts considerable onus on the accountant to fully disclose details of unusual, non-recurring and extraordinary items
Rob

46. Measuring Investors’ Earnings Expectations
Must obtain a reasonable proxy for expected earnings because the market will only react to the component of net income they did not expect
When conditions are not ideal earnings expectations are more complex
Ways to deal with this complexity:
Time Series approach
Analysts’ forecasts
Rob

47. Time Series Approach
Analyze the persistence of past earnings to forecast future earnings
The two extremes of earnings persistence:
Completely persistent – expected earnings for current year are last year’s actual earnings and estimated as the change from last year
Zero persistence – no information from last year is used and all earnings this year are unexpected
Rob

48. Analyst forecasts More accurate than time series forecasts
Analysts interpret more information than past earnings
The age of a forecast has an important fact on its accuracy
The most recent earnings forecast provided a more accurate earnings production than the average forecast of all analysts following the firm (ignoring how old the individual forecasts were)
Timeliness dominates the cancelling-out-of-errors effect of the average forecast
Rob

49. Summary
The market is on average very sophisticated in its ability to evaluate accounting information
This supports the theory of securities market efficiency and supports the decision usefulness approach to financial reporting
As accountants better understand investor response they will be able to provide more useful information to investors
Rob

50. The “Best” Accounting Policy
Need to be careful to not only consider the market
Accounting information is a public good
Accounting information should benefit society overall

51. Other Financial Statement Information
Some supplementary information impacts the market before annual reports are released
It can often be difficult to determine when some information is found out by the market, this makes finding its impact more difficult
Other financial statement and supplementary information augments the market reaction to earnings information

52. Bio-tech Article
Expanding biotech industry is generating large revenues in both Canada and USA
Purpose is to test, develop and produce drugs
Large part of firms capital is raised through public investment and is determined by firms disclosure plan

53. Disclosure and Value
Non-financial statements are key to helping outside investors determine firm value and decide where to invest
Management can selectively disclose information through various public releases

54. Bio-tech Process
Capital needed through stages of development and testing
Pre clinical > Investigational New Drug Stage  > Phase I clinical trial > Phase II clinical trial >Phase III clinical trial > FDA Final Approval
Start with animals and move to humans need approval at most stages to continue testing and development

55. Investors
Financial investors need to find present value of cash flows but drug testing is a long process with a lot of uncertainty
Non-financial statements become increasingly important
 Market value based on beliefs
The study shows that investors reacted more to non-financial information than earnings information

56. Non Financial Disclosure
Demonstrates that non-financial information drives value more than earnings information
Report to shareholders
Press releases
Web site disclosures
Regulatory filings
Lag of stock price and accounting system

57. Conclusion
Investors attempt to predict future events using all forms of information
Accountants must consider market response in the preparation of accounting information to stay competitive
Research is done to determine the markets response to information
The more information accountants provide the better the flow of resources in capital markets

58. Conclusion Cont’d Cannot only consider market reaction
The market’s reactions are very sophisticated
Research supports the efficient markets theory and decision theories
Must make sure to disclose unusual and nonrecurring events

59. Conclusion Cont’d
Investors are more reactive to non- financial information than earnings information, but still augments earnings response
The information approach has led lots of research that has enhanced the decision usefulness of accounting