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Firm Complexity and Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift

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  • Barinov, Alexander
  • Park, Shawn Saeyeul
  • Yildizhan, Celim

Abstract

We show that the post earnings announcement drift (PEAD) is stronger for conglomerates than single-segment firms. Conglomerates, on average, are larger than single segment firms, so it is unlikely that limits-to-arbitrage drive the difference in PEAD. Rather, we hypothesize that market participants find it more costly and difficult to understand firm-specific earnings information regarding conglomerates as they have more complicated business models than single-segment firms. This in turn slows information processing about them. In support of our hypothesis, we find that, compared to single-segment firms with similar size, conglomerates have relatively low institutional ownership and short interest, are covered by fewer analysts, these analysts have less industry expertise and also make larger forecast errors. Finally, we find that an increase in firm complexity leads to larger PEAD and document that more complicated conglomerates have greater PEADs. Our results are robust to a long list of alternative explanations of PEAD as well as alternative measures of firm complexity.

Suggested Citation

  • Barinov, Alexander & Park, Shawn Saeyeul & Yildizhan, Celim, 2016. "Firm Complexity and Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift," MPRA Paper 91421, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 14 Dec 2018.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:91421
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    3. Narongdech Thakerngkiat & Hung T. Nguyen & Nhut H. Nguyen & Nuttawat Visaltanachoti, 2021. "Do accounting information and market environment matter for cross‐asset predictability?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(3), pages 4389-4434, September.
    4. Sharad Asthana & Rachana Kalelkar, 2020. "Impact of economic policy uncertainty on disclosure and pricing of earnings news," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 55(4), pages 1481-1512, November.
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    6. Jaewon Choi & Linh Thompson & Jared Williams, 2019. "Asymmetric Learning from Prices and Post‐Earnings‐Announcement Drift," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(3), pages 1724-1750, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    innate business complexity; post-earnings-announcement drift; conglomerates; complicated firms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting

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