The Speed With Which Analysts Incorporate Firm-Specific and Industry Information in Their Forecasts: Evidence and Implications

Abstract

We separate analyst forecast revisions into components representing industry-wide and firm-specific news. Using the relation between analyst forecast revisions and upcoming news to estimate how completely analysts incorporate their private information in their forecasts, we show that analysts incorporate a smaller proportion of industry-wide news than firm-specific news in their forecasts, particularly when the underlying news is bad. Post-forecast-revision drift is strongly associated with the private industry-wide information that analysts withhold from their forecast revisions. Furthermore, analysts’ information withholding varies predictably with their incentives. Unlike prior research that attributes post-forecast revision drift to delayed market response to news in forecast revisions, our findings suggest that the drift arises because investors are unable to anticipate the news that analysts withhold from their forecast revisions. Our study sheds light on analysts’ role in conveying firm-specific and industry-wide news to investors and on the implications for post-forecast-revision drift.