IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hbs/wpaper/09-031.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Signaling Firm Performance Through Financial Statement Presentation: An Analysis Using Special Items

Author

Listed:
  • Edward J. Riedl

    (Harvard Business School, Accounting and Management Unit)

  • Suraj Srinivasan

    (Harvard Business School, Accounting and Management Unit)

Abstract

This paper investigates whether presentation of special items within the financial statements reflects the firm's underlying economic performance or opportunism. We examine the presentation of recognized special items either as a separate line item on the income statement or aggregated within another line item with disclosure only in the footnotes. Our study is motivated by standard-setting interest in performance reporting and financial statement presentation, as well as prior research investigating managers' presentation choices in other contexts. Using different constructs of persistence to capture the economics of reported special items, we find evidence consistent across a range of specifications that special items highlighted on the income statement are more transitory than those revealed only in the footnotes. For most special items, these results are consistent with this presentation decision reflecting underlying firm performance. For a subset observations - namely, those likely to reflect "big bath" reporting incentives - we provide limited evidence suggestive of opportunism in this presentation decision.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward J. Riedl & Suraj Srinivasan, 2007. "Signaling Firm Performance Through Financial Statement Presentation: An Analysis Using Special Items," Harvard Business School Working Papers 09-031, Harvard Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:09-031
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-031.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brooks, LeRoy D & Buckmaster, Dale A, 1976. "Further Evidence on the Time Series Properties of Accounting Income," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(5), pages 1359-1373, December.
    2. Bhattacharya, Nilabhra & Black, Ervin L. & Christensen, Theodore E. & Larson, Chad R., 2003. "Assessing the relative informativeness and permanence of pro forma earnings and GAAP operating earnings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1-3), pages 285-319, December.
    3. David Burgstahler & James Jiambalvo & Terry Shevlin, 2002. "Do Stock Prices Fully Reflect the Implications of Special Items for Future Earnings?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 585-612, June.
    4. W. Bruce Johnson & William C. Schwartz, 2005. "Are Investors Misled by “Pro Forma†Earnings?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 22(4), pages 915-963, December.
    5. David Aboody & Mary E. Barth & Ron Kasznik, 2004. "Firms' Voluntary Recognition of Stock‐Based Compensation Expense," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 123-150, May.
    6. Gu, Zhaoyang & Chen, Ting, 2004. "Analysts' treatment of nonrecurring items in street earnings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 129-170, December.
    7. Mark T. Bradshaw & Richard G. Sloan, 2002. "GAAP versus The Street: An Empirical Assessment of Two Alternative Definitions of Earnings," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 41-66, March.
    8. Hirst, DE & Hopkins, PE, 1998. "Comprehensive income reporting and analysts' valuation judgments," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36, pages 47-75.
    9. Lipe, Rc, 1986. "The Information Contained In The Components Of Earnings," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24, pages 37-64.
    10. Healy, Paul M. & Palepu, Krishna G., 2001. "Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, and the capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 405-440, September.
    11. Aboody, D, 1996. "Recognition versus disclosure in the oil and gas industry," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34, pages 21-32.
    12. Elliott, JA & Hanna, JD, 1996. "Repeated accounting write-offs and the information content of earnings," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34, pages 135-155.
    13. 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.
    14. Ronald A. Dye & Sri S. Sridhar, 2004. "Reliability‐Relevance Trade‐Offs and the Efficiency of Aggregation," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 51-88, 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. Bischof, Jannis & Ebert, Michael, 2007. "IAS 39 and biases in the risk perception of financial instruments," Papers 07-73, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.

    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. Jeffery S. Abarbanell & Reuven Lehavy, 2007. "Letting the “Tail Wag the Dog†: The Debate over GAAP versus Street Earnings Revisited," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(3), pages 675-723, September.
    2. S. P. Kothari & Charles Wasley, 2019. "Commemorating the 50‐Year Anniversary of Ball and Brown (1968): The Evolution of Capital Market Research over the Past 50 Years," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(5), pages 1117-1159, December.
    3. Edith Leung & David Veenman, 2018. "Non‐GAAP Earnings Disclosure in Loss Firms," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 1083-1137, September.
    4. Frank Heflin & Kalin S. Kolev & Benjamin Whipple, 2024. "The risk-relevance of non-GAAP earnings," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 493-524, March.
    5. Haeyoung Shin & Michael Lacina & Shanshan Pan, 2024. "The order in a series of continuous special items and the likelihood of income classification shifting," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 63(3), pages 829-862, October.
    6. Kothari, S. P., 2001. "Capital markets research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 105-231, September.
    7. Susan M. Albring & María T. Cabán‐García & Jacqueline L. Reck, 2010. "The value relevance of a non‐GAAP performance metric to the capital markets," Review of Accounting and Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 9(3), pages 264-284, August.
    8. Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2003. "Limited attention, information disclosure, and financial reporting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1-3), pages 337-386, December.
    9. Wang, Qian & Ettredge, Michael, 2015. "Discretionary allocation of corporate income to segments," Research in Accounting Regulation, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 1-13.
    10. Guragai, Binod & Attachot, Weerapat & Peabody, S. Drew, 2020. "Financial statement presentation of discontinued operations: Determinants and consequences," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    11. Gary M. Entwistle & Glenn D. Feltham & Chima Mbagwu, 2012. "Credibility Attributes and Investor Perceptions of Non‐GAAP Earnings Exclusions," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(4), pages 229-257, December.
    12. Vinay Goyal & Subrata K. Mitra, 2022. "Is the asymmetric impact of aggregate revenue and aggregate earnings on the stock index in accordance with the prospect theory?," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 22(1), pages 200-222, March.
    13. Nagar, Neerav & Desai, Naman & Jacob, Joshy, 2021. "Do Big 4 auditors limit classification shifting? Evidence from India," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    14. Carol Anilowski Cain & Kalin S. Kolev & Sarah McVay, 2020. "Detecting Opportunistic Special Items," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 2099-2119, May.
    15. Shanshan Pan & Michael Lacina & Haeyoung Shin, 2019. "Income Classification Shifting and Financial Analysts’ Forecasts," Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(02), pages 1-48, June.
    16. Theodore E. Christensen & Enrique Gomez & Matthew Ma & Jing Pan, 2021. "Analysts’ role in shaping non-GAAP reporting: evidence from a natural experiment," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 172-217, March.
    17. Lu, Hsueh-Tien, 2018. "Voluntary disclosure and the pricing of earnings components," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 64-73.
    18. Gu, Zhaoyang & Chen, Ting, 2004. "Analysts' treatment of nonrecurring items in street earnings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 129-170, December.
    19. Anagnostopoulou, Seraina C. & Gounopoulos, Dimitrios & Malikov, Kamran & Pham, Hang, 2021. "Earnings management by classification shifting and IPO survival," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    20. Nerissa C. Brown & Theodore E. Christensen & W. Brooke Elliott & Richard D. Mergenthaler, 2012. "Investor Sentiment and Pro Forma Earnings Disclosures," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 1-40, March.

    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:hbs:wpaper:09-031. 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: HBS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/harbsus.html .

    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.