Performance disclosure in the real estate industry: a case research of analyst reports and corporate financial presentations in Italy

This paper aims to compare the analysts' reports on Italian publicly listed real estate companies with the information disclosed by the same companies in their presentations of business plans. Considering that the European real estate companies have a strong representative professional association that formulates best practices in reporting and accounting, we design a multiple case qualitative research to investigate if the reporting practices supported by the association enable to have benefits in disclosure transparency in the areas of most relevance to investors, even in a context usually not affected by information asymmetry issues. This study provides evidence that a significant coherence between information released by managers and data used by analysts exists, especially in the description of both the key drivers of profitability and financial structure. However, the analysis specifically reveals a partial discrepancy between companies and analysts in the use of information, due to substantially different purposes of documents.