IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jebusi/v106y2019ics0148619518302522.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Investor skepticism and the incremental effects of small positive sales surprises

Author

Listed:
  • Shih, Michael

Abstract

Prior research suggests that investors see a small positive earnings surprise as a warning sign indicating a higher chance of creative accounting. This study finds that investors see a small positive sales surprise as another warning sign of manipulation. I compare the coefficient in the regression of abnormal stock returns on sales surprise (while controlling for earnings surprise) across subsamples of firms. The coefficient is lower for firms with small positive sales surprises than firms with sales surprises in any other range. I also find that while a positive sales surprise is generally regarded as good news, a small positive sales surprise has no significant effect on abnormal stock returns among firms reporting a small positive earnings surprise.

Suggested Citation

  • Shih, Michael, 2019. "Investor skepticism and the incremental effects of small positive sales surprises," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jebusi:v:106:y:2019:i:c:s0148619518302522
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconbus.2019.105847
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148619518302522
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jeconbus.2019.105847?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lipe, Robert C. & Bryant, Lisa & Widener, Sally K., 1998. "Do nonlinearity, firm-specific coefficients, and losses represent distinct factors in the relation between stock returns and accounting earnings?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 195-214, May.
    2. Edmund Keung & Zhi‐Xing Lin & Michael Shih, 2010. "Does the Stock Market See a Zero or Small Positive Earnings Surprise as a Red Flag?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 91-121, March.
    3. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Livnat, Joshua, 2006. "Revenue surprises and stock returns," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1-2), pages 147-171, April.
    4. Degeorge, Francois & Patel, Jayendu & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1999. "Earnings Management to Exceed Thresholds," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72(1), pages 1-33, January.
    5. Bin Ke & Yong Yu, 2006. "The Effect of Issuing Biased Earnings Forecasts on Analysts' Access to Management and Survival," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(5), pages 965-999, December.
    6. William Kinney & David Burgstahler & Roger Martin, 2002. "Earnings Surprise “Materiality” as Measured by Stock Returns," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(5), pages 1297-1329, December.
    7. Ball, R & Brown, P, 1968. "Empirical Evaluation Of Accounting Income Numbers," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 159-178.
    8. Mendenhall, Rr, 1991. "Evidence On The Possible Underweighting Of Earnings-Related Information," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 170-179.
    9. Kothari, S. P., 2001. "Capital markets research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 105-231, September.
    10. Bartov, Eli & Givoly, Dan & Hayn, Carla, 2002. "The rewards to meeting or beating earnings expectations," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 173-204, June.
    11. Swaminathan, S & Weintrop, J, 1991. "The Information-Content Of Earnings, Revenues, And Expenses," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 418-427.
    12. Edmund Keung & Zhi‐Xing Lin & Michael Shih, 2010. "Does the Stock Market See a Zero or Small Positive Earnings Surprise as a Red Flag?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 105-136, March.
    13. Abarbanell, Jeffrey S & Bernard, Victor L, 1992. "Tests of Analysts' Overreaction/Underreaction to Earnings Information as an Explanation for Anomalous Stock Price Behavior," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(3), pages 1181-1207, July.
    14. Lynn Rees & K. Sivaramakrishnan, 2007. "The Effect of Meeting or Beating Revenue Forecasts on the Association between Quarterly Returns and Earnings Forecast Errors," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(1), pages 259-290, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Qazi Ghulam Mustafa Qureshi & Yves Mard & François Aubert, 2022. "Effects of earnings management on firms' marketadjusted return," Post-Print hal-04266643, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Edmund Keung & Zhi‐Xing Lin & Michael Shih, 2010. "Does the Stock Market See a Zero or Small Positive Earnings Surprise as a Red Flag?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 105-136, March.
    2. Vincent Chen & Samuel Tiras, 2015. "‘Other information’ as an explanatory factor for the opposite market reactions to earnings surprises," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 45(4), pages 757-784, November.
    3. David Hirshleifer & Sonya S. Lim & Siew Hong Teoh, 2011. "Limited Investor Attention and Stock Market Misreactions to Accounting Information," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 35-73.
    4. Josef Fink, 2020. "A Review of the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift," Working Paper Series, Social and Economic Sciences 2020-04, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Karl-Franzens-University Graz.
    5. Lawrence Brown & Kelly Huang & Arianna Pinello, 2013. "To beat or not to beat? The importance of analysts’ cash flow forecasts," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 41(4), pages 723-752, November.
    6. Paul A. Griffin & David H. Lont, 2021. "Evidence of an increasing trend in earnings surprises over the past two decades: The role of positive manager‐initiated non‐GAAP adjustments," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(9-10), pages 1525-1559, October.
    7. Sanjay W. Bissessur & David Veenman, 2016. "Analyst information precision and small earnings surprises," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 1327-1360, December.
    8. Fink, Josef, 2021. "A review of the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    9. Neururer, Thaddeus, 2022. "Meet-or-beat streak heterogeneity and equity prices," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 455-470.
    10. He, Wen & Li, Yan, 2020. "Comparing with the average: Reference points and market reactions to above-average earnings surprises," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    11. Po‐Chang Chen & Ganapathi S. Narayanamoorthy & Theodore Sougiannis & Hui Zhou, 2020. "Analyst underreaction and the post‐forecast revision drift," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(9-10), pages 1151-1181, October.
    12. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    13. Jeffrey T. Doyle & Russell J. Lundholm & Mark T. Soliman, 2006. "The Extreme Future Stock Returns Following I/B/E/S Earnings Surprises," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(5), pages 849-887, December.
    14. Bird, Andrew & Karolyi, Stephen A. & Ruchti, Thomas G., 2019. "Understanding the “numbers game”," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2).
    15. Ning Jia & Arun Rai & Sean Xin Xu, 2020. "Reducing Capital Market Anomaly: The Role of Information Technology Using an Information Uncertainty Lens," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(2), pages 979-1001, February.
    16. Itay Kama, 2009. "On the Market Reaction to Revenue and Earnings Surprises," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1-2), pages 31-50.
    17. C. S. Agnes Cheng & K. C. Kenneth Chu & James Ohlson, 2020. "Analyst forecasts: sales and profit margins," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 54-83, March.
    18. Perotti, Pietro, 2010. "Order aggressiveness as a metric to assess the usefulness of accounting information," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 306-333, September.
    19. Beyer, Anne & Cohen, Daniel A. & Lys, Thomas Z. & Walther, Beverly R., 2010. "The financial reporting environment: Review of the recent literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 296-343, December.
    20. David Veenman & Patrick Verwijmeren, 2022. "The Earnings Expectations Game and the Dispersion Anomaly," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 3129-3149, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Earnings management;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jebusi:v:106:y:2019:i:c:s0148619518302522. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-economics-and-business .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.