IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/bracre/v49y2017i5p493-511.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How do financial analysts interpret industrial firms' corporate refocusing announcements?

Author

Listed:
  • Mak, Chun Yu

Abstract

This study investigates how analysts perceive the effect of corporate refocusing announcements on UK industrial firms' future earnings by examining current-year and one-year-ahead earnings forecast revisions, current-year target price revisions and earnings forecast errors in the five years surrounding a refocusing announcement year. The results reveal that analysts adjust their earnings forecasts downward in a refocusing announcement year and the following two years, predicting that operating performance in the post-refocusing period is likely to decline relative to their former earnings forecasts. Secondly, there is no evidence that analysts issue biased earnings forecasts after refocusing announcements or that their forecasts appear less accurate. Thirdly, they adjust their earnings forecasts downward in a refocusing announcement year with downward market movement. However, they do not similarly adjust their earnings forecast upward with upward market movement. The magnitude of downward adjustments exceeds that of upward adjustments. They also adjust current-year target price forecasts downward with downward market movement in the year prior to a refocusing announcement.

Suggested Citation

  • Mak, Chun Yu, 2017. "How do financial analysts interpret industrial firms' corporate refocusing announcements?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 493-511.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:bracre:v:49:y:2017:i:5:p:493-511
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2016.10.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890838916300415
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.bar.2016.10.003?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. Chun Yu Mak & Norman Strong & Martin Walker, 2011. "Conditional Earnings Conservatism and Corporate Refocusing Activities," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(4), pages 1041-1082, September.
    2. Haynes, Michelle & Thompson, Steve & Wright, Mike, 2003. "The determinants of corporate divestment: evidence from a panel of UK firms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 147-166, September.
    3. Michael P. Keane & David E. Runkle, 1998. "Are Financial Analysts' Forecasts of Corporate Profits Rational?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(4), pages 768-805, August.
    4. Gönül Çolak, 2010. "Diversification, Refocusing and Firm Value," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 16(3), pages 422-448, June.
    5. Abarbanell, Jeffery S., 1991. "Do analysts' earnings forecasts incorporate information in prior stock price changes?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 147-165, June.
    6. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    7. Ofek, Eli, 1993. "Capital structure and firm response to poor performance: An empirical analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 3-30, August.
    8. Christopher S. Armstrong & Alan D. Jagolinzer & David F. Larcker, 2010. "Chief Executive Officer Equity Incentives and Accounting Irregularities," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(2), pages 225-271, May.
    9. Thomas W. Bates, 2005. "Asset Sales, Investment Opportunities, and the Use of Proceeds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 105-135, February.
    10. S. P. Kothari & Susan Shu & Peter D. Wysocki, 2009. "Do Managers Withhold Bad News?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 241-276, March.
    11. X. Frank Zhang, 2006. "Information Uncertainty and Analyst Forecast Behavior," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(2), pages 565-590, June.
    12. Powell, Ronan & Yawson, Alfred, 2005. "Industry aspects of takeovers and divestitures: Evidence from the UK," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(12), pages 3015-3040, December.
    13. Berger, Philip G & Ofek, Eli, 1999. "Causes and Effects of Corporate Refocusing Programs," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(2), pages 311-345.
    14. Lee, Myoung-jae, 2005. "Micro-Econometrics for Policy, Program and Treatment Effects," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199267699, Decembrie.
    15. Mulherin, J. Harold & Boone, Audra L., 2000. "Comparing acquisitions and divestitures," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 117-139, July.
    16. Clement, Michael B. & Hales, Jeffrey & Xue, Yanfeng, 2011. "Understanding analysts' use of stock returns and other analysts' revisions when forecasting earnings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 279-299, April.
    17. Beixin Lin & Rong Yang, 2006. "The effect of repeat restructuring charges on analysts’ forecast revisions and accuracy," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 267-283, November.
    18. Ramnath, Sundaresh & Rock, Steve & Shane, Philip, 2008. "The financial analyst forecasting literature: A taxonomy with suggestions for further research," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 34-75.
    19. 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.
    20. Ron Kasznik & Maureen F. McNichols, 2002. "Does Meeting Earnings Expectations Matter? Evidence from Analyst Forecast Revisions and Share Prices," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 727-759, June.
    21. Myers, Stewart C., 1977. "Determinants of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-175, November.
    22. Jacob, J, 1997. "Discussion of do security analysts improve their performance with experience?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35, pages 159-166.
    23. Basu, Sudipta, 1997. "The conservatism principle and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 3-37, December.
    24. Hite, Gailen L. & Owers, James E. & Rogers, Ronald C., 1987. "The market for interfirm asset sales : Partial sell-offs and total liquidations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 229-252, June.
    25. Chaney, Paul K. & Hogan, Chris E. & Jeter, Debra C., 1999. "The effect of reporting restructuring charges on analysts' forecast revisions and errors," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 261-284, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Mak, Chun Yu, 2016. "Do market predictions affect its reaction to UK listed industrial firms' corporate refocusing announcements?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 464-478.
    2. Angélica María Sánchez-Riofrío & Luis Ángel Guerras-Martín & Francisco Javier Forcadell, 2015. "Business portfolio restructuring: a comprehensive bibliometric review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 1921-1950, March.
    3. 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.
    4. Ushijima, Tatsuo, 2009. "R&D intensity and acquisition and divestiture of corporate assets: Evidence from Japan," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 61(5), pages 415-433, September.
    5. Ushijima, Tatsuo & Schaede, Ulrike, 2014. "The market for corporate subsidiaries in Japan: An empirical study of trades among listed firms," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 36-52.
    6. Chun Yu Mak & Norman Strong & Martin Walker, 2011. "Conditional Earnings Conservatism and Corporate Refocusing Activities," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(4), pages 1041-1082, September.
    7. Sian Owen & Liting Shi & Alfred Yawson, 2010. "Divestitures, wealth effects and corporate governance," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 50(2), pages 389-415, June.
    8. Wu, Yanran & Zhang, Chao, 2022. "Hard to arbitrage, hard for analysts to forecast," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    9. Maria Fotaki & Apostolos Kourtis & Raphael Markellos, 2023. "Human resources turnover as an asset acquisition and divestiture process: Evidence from the U.K. football industry," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 2696-2711, July.
    10. Kothari, S. P., 2001. "Capital markets research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 105-231, September.
    11. Valeriy Sibilkov & Miroslava Straska & H. Gregory Waller, 2013. "The value implications of restrictions on asset sales," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 22(3), pages 98-108, September.
    12. Ramnath, Sundaresh & Rock, Steve & Shane, Philip, 2008. "The financial analyst forecasting literature: A taxonomy with suggestions for further research," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 34-75.
    13. Sabet, Amir H. & Agha, Mahmoud & Heaney, Richard, 2018. "Value of investment: Evidence from the oil and gas industry," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 190-204.
    14. Armstrong, Christopher S. & Guay, Wayne R. & Weber, Joseph P., 2010. "The role of information and financial reporting in corporate governance and debt contracting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 179-234, December.
    15. Finlay, William & Marshall, Andrew & McColgan, Patrick, 2018. "Financing, fire sales, and the stockholder wealth effects of asset divestiture announcements," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 323-348.
    16. Paul-Valentin Ngobo & Jean-François Casta & Olivier J. Ramond, 2012. "Is customer satisfaction a relevant metric for financial analysts?," Post-Print halshs-00680003, HAL.
    17. Denis, Diane K. & Shome, Dilip K., 2005. "An empirical investigation of corporate asset downsizing," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 427-448, June.
    18. Nguyen, Giang & Vu, Le, 2018. "Asset sales and subsequent acquisitions," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 87-97.
    19. Mei-Chen Lin & J. Jimmy Yang, 2023. "Do lottery characteristics matter for analysts’ forecast behavior?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 1057-1091, October.
    20. Guojin Gong & Laura Y. Li & Jeff J. Wang, 2011. "Serial Correlation in Management Earnings Forecast Errors," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(3), pages 677-720, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corporate refocusing activities; Earnings forecast revisions; Target price revisions; Forecast errors;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance
    • M40 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - General

    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:bracre:v:49:y:2017:i:5:p:493-511. 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/the-british-accounting-review .

    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.