Information content of management forecast disclosures

1985 associated with significant positive negative abnormal returns around the date of forecast. Ajinkya and Gift 1984 also document informativeness of management forecasts. They find that financial analysts revise their forecasts in response to management forecast disclosures. More recent study also finds the information content of management forecast disclosures. For example, Kasznik and Lev 1995, Atiase et. al. 2005, 2006a, and 2006b and Supattarakul 2003 find a positive association between earnings news convey through management forecasts and price reaction around forecast dates. Prior studies mentioned above are limited to management forecasts of US firms. There are a few studies done in other countries but most of them are limited to investigate management forecasts issued by IPO firms. Most of IPO firms in many countries are required to provide management forecast in their prospectuses. Therefore, most of management forecasts of IPO firms are on a mandatory basis, not a voluntary basis. Jaggi et. al. 2006 examine 759 management forecasts issued by Taiwan IPO firms from 1994 to 2001. They find that firms are likely to provide optimistic forecasts than conservative forecasts. To meet their targets, those firms subsequently manage reported earnings instead of revise their forecasts. Gramlich and Sorensen 2004 investigate 58 Danish IPO firms that issue management forecasts between 1984 and 1996. Their evidences strongly support that Danish IPO firms engage in accrual management to meet their management forecasts. Jelic et. al., 1998 examine the accuracy of earnings forecasts in IPO prospectuses of Malaysian firms and find that on average, the absolute forecast error is 55. Kato et. al. 2006 examine management forecast disclosures in Japan in general setting, not restrict to IPO firms. However, management forecast disclosures in Japan are provided on a mandatory basis. Examining management forecasts issued in 1997 to 2006, they find that management forecasts in each year are over optimistic. In spite of their systematic over- optimism, management forecasts in Japan are also informative, although the stock price reaction to these forecasts is not as large as is typically observed in US. 1986 In summary, prior studies document that management forecast disclosures are informative. However, most of them are restricted to management forecasts issued by US firms or management forecasts are provided on a mandatory basis. Management forecasts of Thai firms which are disclosed on a voluntary basis remain unexplored. Therefore, this study aims at providing empirical evidence on information content of management forecasts of firms listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand SET.

3. Research Methodology and Data Collection

The main objective of this study is to explore management forecast disclosure practices and investigate the information content of management forecast disclosures in Thailand. Samples in this study are management forecast disclosures issued during two 12-month periods: 1 12-month period starting January 2005 and 2 12-month period starting July 2006. 359 We hand-collect management forecasts issued during the specified periods from the NEWSCENTER database and the SETSMART database. In Thailand, other than the Stock Exchange of Thailand SET channel i.e., the SETSMART database, management mostly releases its forecasts through the business press. The NEWSCENTER database is a database containing news articles published in Thailand. In the collection process, we set the criteria to collect management forecast data as follows: 1 the forecast must contain various keywords such as ―expects‖, ―estimates‖, ―targets‖, etc. and 2 the forecast must be attributed to company officials. For criterion 1, we define keywords to ensure that an article discloses a management forecast since some articles release the actual performance and criterion 2 ensures that company forecasts in any articles are not estimated by news reporters or financial analysts. As 359 The Stock Exchange of Thailand SET issued the disclosure guidelines for listed companies in March 2006, therefore, we exclude management forecast disclosed three months before and after the issuance of the disclosure guidelines. 1987 described in Table 1, our initial sample consists of 4,483 management forecast disclosures issued by management of 287 companies listed in the SET. ================================= Insert Table 1 here. =================================

4. Empirical Results

Table 1 provides sample construction for descriptive statistics. We require data on the firm-quarter level to analyze characteristics of forecast firms. 360 We remove management forecasts of each firm which are redundant forecasts in each quarter. In doing so, we obtain 1,368 firm-quarters in our sample. We also remove 98 firm-quarters without returns data available in the DATASTREAM database and exclude 79 firm-quarters without earnings data available in the DATASTREAM database. Finally, we obtain 1,191 firm-quarters from 263 firms. Table 2 separately provides descriptive statistics of all Thai listed firms, forecast firms, and non-forecast firms. In addition to means and standard deviations, Table 2 also summarizes various percentile values for price -deflated unexpected earnings UE, earnings variations SD_NI, return variations SD_RET, and market capitalization MV. ================================= Insert Table 2 here. ================================= Mean of UE of forecast firms is positive UE = 0.294 while that of non-forecast firms is negative UE = -13.140. However, mean of UE for forecast firms is insignificantly different from mean of UE for non-forecast firms t statistic = 0.390. This is inconsistent with the notion that larger earnings surprise firms are more likely to provide management forecast than are smaller earnings surprise firms [Ajinkya and Gift 1984, Kasznik and Lev 1995, and Supattarakul 2003]. Mean of SD_NI for forecast firms is significantly greater than mean of SD_NI for non- forecast firms t statistic = 7.583 suggesting that higher earnings variation firms are more likely 360 Prior studies on firm‘s forecast choice also use firm-quarter level in their analysis [Kasznik and Lev 1995 and Supattarakul 2003].