Security Returns and Volume Responses Around International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Earnings Announcements

Abstract

To improve comparability of financial statements across countries, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) are involved in the convergence process for a single set of high-quality accounting standards. This paper examines and interprets the security market response around IFRS-based earnings announcements of UK cross-listed firms in the US equity markets. How US market participants react to IFRS earnings disclosures on a daily basis is important regulators (e.g., the SEC and the FASB) in their task in improving comparability of financial reporting. As predicted, I find evidence of significant price and trading responses on day t=0 and +1, which suggests that IFRS earnings news helps facilitate the price and trading adjustment process. The immediate price reaction over the 3-day announcement window on average is 41.8% for IFRS earnings news, whereas it is 79% for US GAAP earnings disclosures. These findings suggest that investors price 42% of the surprise in IFRS-using firms' earnings announcements, suggesting that US GAAP earnings information is systematic (i.e., has market-wide effect) and/or that IFRS-based earnings contain less unexpected informative news relative to US earnings disclosures. The evidence shows that IFRS is sufficient to support the production of information that investors are apparently willing to use.