Core Earnings Research Articles

Classification Shifting, Abnormal Earnings Dynamics, and Stock Valuation

We examine the information content of earnings components conditional on the existence of misclassification of earnings in the income statement. We develop a vector autoregression (VAR) of a set of accounting variables that accommodates, besides other variables, two components of transitory earnings; a core component reflecting shifted core earnings and a transitory component reflecting purified transitory earnings. Our model analysis derives two properties of shifted core earnings. Shifted core earnings forecast future abnormal earnings similar to reported core earnings, and shifted core earnings provide a bad news signal of management incompetence. Using special items as measure of a transitory line item that is potentially contaminated by shifted earnings, we provide empirical evidence in support of the former. We propose and find empirically that purified special items are transitory. Nevertheless, our evidence suggests that stock prices do not fully reflect the heterogeneity between the core and transitory components of special items, but rather overstate the entire amount of special items when shifting is suspected.

The Ethical Reporting of Non-GAAP Performance Measures

Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) provide for a standardized method of calculating va-rious performance measures, such as net income, in-come from continuing operations, and cash flow from operations. There are two primary sources of GAAP – the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), and the U.S. GAAP, as developed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Howe-ver, non-GAAP performance measures have been repor -ted by companies for several decades, as an alternative to these GAAP measures. Managers argue that these non-GAAP measures improve the information about the core earnings of their companies. Company mana-gers have discretion in determining what is included and what is not included in the calculation of these non-GA -AP performance measures. In this essay, I review non--GAAP reporting, make a call for the ethical reporting of non-GAAP performance measures, and make recom-mendations for ways to improve non-GAAP reporting.

The information content of small business earnings

Purpose– This paper starts from the observation that small businesses in France report a significant fraction of their net income in the form of non-core earnings. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to examine the persistence and informativeness of both core and non-core earnings of small businesses listed on the Euronext Paris market.Design/methodology/approach– Panel regressions estimated with heteroskedasticity robust standard errors are used to investigate the relationships between earnings components, future performance and stock market valuation of small businesses.Findings– The findings show that core and non-core earnings of the current year (t), contrary to those of the previous year (t−1), make it possible to predict the performance of the next year (t+1). However, only the persistence of current core earnings is valued by the stock market.Research limitations/implications– The study puts forward an anomaly of market efficiency. Thus, it shows that investors in the French stock market do not appropriately price a part of the available financial information (i.e. non-core earnings) that may contribute to a better assessment of the future performance of listed small businesses.Practical implications– The persistence of non-core earnings is certainly less important than that of core elements but able to help investors appraise the future performance of listed small businesses. Hence, it represents useful financial information for investors.Originality/value– This paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating the relationships between earnings, future performance and stock market valuation of listed SMEs, especially. Thus, the findings of this research allow a better understanding of earnings components properties (i.e. persistence) and their implication on the stock market valuation (i.e. informativeness) of listed SMEs. Given the observed specificities of earnings for this category of firms, these findings may be of particular interest to both researchers and investors.

The Effects of Governance on Classification Shifting and Compensation Shielding

Prior research (e.g., Dechow, Huson, and Sloan 1994) documents that, on average, compensation practices appear to shield CEO pay from income-decreasing special items. In some circumstances, compensation shielding can be efficient. For example, it may encourage CEOs with earnings-sensitive pay to take an action that reduces current earnings but nevertheless enhances value. Compensation shielding can be inefficient in other circumstances, such as when a board of directors is captured by an overly-powerful CEO or the magnitude of negative special items has been overstated (e.g., by shifting core expenses into special items.) This paper explores whether strong governance can explain cross-sectional variation compensation shielding, and whether stronger governance and auditing are associated with less shifting of expenses. We find that strong corporate governance mechanisms, as captured by board (and committee) independence, the Sarbanes-Oxley (2002) Act (SOX) and its related governance reforms, and switches to Big-4 auditors, are all associated with less compensation shielding. While our evidence suggests that strong overall governance is associated with a reduction in manipulation of core earnings through classification shifting in the cross-section, we find inconclusive evidence to suggest that board independence or SOX influence classification shifting.

Earnings management in India: Managers’ fixation on operating profits

We present evidence that the managers of Indian firms fixate on operating profits, and thus manage such earnings. Specifically, they shift operating expenses to income-decreasing special items in order to inflate operating earnings (McVay, 2006. The Accounting Review, 81(3), 531). We also shed light on another form of classification shifting and find that the managers of Indian firms also engage in netting income-increasing special items against the core expenses in order to inflate core earnings. Given the environment of comparatively weaker corporate governance and investor protection, our results suggest that the magnitude of classification shifting is much more in Indian firms as compared to firms in the United States and East-Asian countries. We also find financial distress to be an important firm characteristic that is likely to influence the managers to engage in classification shifting, and find that financially distressed firms are more likely to engage in both types of classification shifting.

Core Earnings Uncertainty, Dividend Change Announcements and the Reduction of Covariance Component Risks

We present evidence of two systematic market risk implications associated with core earnings news implicit in dividend change announcements: (1) a decline in firm-market correlation intensity, consistent with reduced investor reliance on overall market movements to value shares, and (2) a downward shift in standard deviation of returns, consistent with increased core earnings information precision. Decoupling these two covariance component risk effects is important because they can offset one another at the firm level, masking unique market influences on total systematic risk. Each is influenced by the information environment in different ways and each is shown to incrementally explain returns in a manner consistent with the capital asset pricing model (CAPM).

Misclassifying Core Expenses as Special Items: Cost of Goods Sold or Selling, General, and Administrative Expenses?

Prior classification shifting studies pool core expenses together and conclude that managers misclassify core expenses as income-decreasing special items to inflate reported core earnings (e.g., McVay 2006; Fan et al. 2010). Their core expense measure combines cost of goods sold (COGS) with selling, general and administrative expenses (SGA). This study models COGS and SGA separately and investigates the choice of COGS versus SGA misclassification that managers make to meet different profitability benchmarks. We find that when reported gross margin shows a small increase from four quarters ago, COGS (but not SGA) misclassification is more prominent. In comparison, both COGS and SGA misclassification are more prevalent when firms report small core earnings or small increases in core earnings and when actual earnings just meet or beat the analyst forecast in the fourth quarter. Moreover, our study sheds light on real activities management (RAM) research. Specifically, we find that managers engage in RAM of COGS to achieve the gross margin benchmark, but not core earnings benchmarks. For SGA, we show that unexpected SGA contain a significant expense misclassification effect, suggesting the importance to control for expense misclassification effect for future RAM research. Overall, our study extends prior expense management literature on both classification shifting and RAM.

The Relation between Information Asymmetry and Earnings Management: A Revisit using Adjusted Trading Volume and Unexpected Core Earnings

The Relation between Information Asymmetry and Earnings Management: A Revisit using Adjusted Trading Volume and Unexpected Core Earnings

Determinants of Investor Reactions to Error Announcements - Evidence from Germany

This paper contributes to the understanding of the German two-tiered enforcement set-up. The first tier is represented by the private review panel FREP, which has been investigating IFRS financial statements since 2005 and ensures consistent and faithful application of the latter. The German securities regulator BaFin, as second tier to the mechanism, enforces disclosure of errors established by either FREP or BaFin and therefore substantiates the adverse disclosure mechanism. We investigate short-term reactions to error announcements published between 2006 and 2013 and find evidence for differences of investor reactions between the early and the cur rent years of enforcement. Disentangling the contributing factors of error severity, we provide evidence that investor reaction is primarily associated with the impact of error announcements on profitability. In addition, we detect that the amount of errors established is negatively associated with investor reaction indicating that extensive error announcements have an attenuating effect on investor reaction. Yet we caution to blindly interpret these findings, since they are also subject to change over time and partially driven by outliers. Further multivariate analyses provide additional insights referring to determinants of investor reactions by examining effects of stated errors on core earnings, effects of errors triggered due to second-guessing the use of professional judgment, and changes of investor perception over time.

Income Classification Shifting and Mispricing of Core Earnings

This study examines whether the market misprices core earnings (operating income before depreciation and special items) when firms use income classification shifting tactics to boost their core ear...

Earnings Volatility and Earnings Prediction: Analysis and UK Evidence

This paper confirms that US evidence of a negative relationship between earnings persistence and earnings volatility applies to UK firms over the period 1991–2010. Our analytical framework highlights the possibility that this result may reflect downward estimation bias in earnings persistence (and persistence of cash flow and accruals components of earnings) related to transitory earnings elements. Out-of-sample forecasts, based on models estimated for earnings volatility quartiles, suggest significant improvement in earnings forecasts for lower volatility firms. The results also suggest that the negative association between earnings persistence and volatility may be due to both estimation bias and variation in core earnings persistence.

The Role of Transitory Earnings for Managerial Effort Allocation to Intangibles

There is a concern about the ability of earnings to adequately reflect managerial efforts to intangible-based activities. Agency theory suggests that when core earnings relay little information about managerial effort to certain activities, effort allocation will be insufficient. Risk averse managers consider costs of investing in RD they can send signals about the future and security prices reflect information about them. This means that even though the accounting system creates weak value relevant core earnings concerning intangibles, if transitory earnings can provide some additional information, they can play a vital incentive role. For example, unsuccessful prior intangible investments or obsolete inventory would be reported as transitory earnings (e.g., disposal of a poorly performing line of operation, asset write-downs, inventory write-offs), which can send signals to markets about managerial effort to tackle problems. These can be useful to convey information about managerial efforts exerted on intangibles. I show that under these conditions, market-based compensation helps to mitigate inefficient effort allocation to intangible-based activities. However, the reflection of transitory earnings in market-based compensation can also encourage earnings management. Managers may allocate their effort to a nonproductive activity such as shifting operating expenses to non-operation expenses to avoid a sharp decline in security price or/and meet analyst forecasts. Such activities do not increase economic value. Thus, the ability of transitory earnings to produce proper managerial effort allocation has to be weighed against the possibility of encouraging earnings manipulation.

Dividend Irrelevance and Accounting Models of Value

AbstractIn accounting models of value, dividends typically appear to have a strong positive relationship with value despite theoretical reasons to expect dividend displacement. We show that this result is driven by the relationship between dividends and both core earnings and other information derived from the valuation error in the prior year. Where core earnings can be effectively modelled in a specification including other information, dividend displacement is no longer rejected. Under these circumstances dividends exhibit weak incremental predictive power for earnings and earnings expectations and hence have little impact on value. We show that valuation models are sensitive to model specification and should be used with caution when testing the value impact of firm characteristics or accounting numbers.

Comparative Value-Relevance of GAAP, IBES, S&P Core, Cash Earnings and Cash Flows

This study examines the impact the global financial crisis had on the value relevance of GAAP and non-GAAP earnings. We adopt the Ohlson (1995) valuation and CAR models to test the value relevance and information content of alternative earnings measures. We use six different earnings measures comprising IBES earnings, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) core earnings, cash earnings, cash flows from operations, earnings from operations adjusted to exclude special items under GAAP and income before extraordinary items under GAAP. We draw our sample from US publicly traded firms between 2002 and 2010. Our sample is partitioned into Financial and non-Financial firms, and S&P 500 and non-S&P 500 firms. The results show that investors place greater value relevance on GAAP earnings during the GFC period relative to the pre-GFC period.

The Differential Value Relevance of S&P's Core Earnings Versus GAAP Earnings: The Role of Stock Option Expense

AbstractIn 2002, Standard & Poor's (S&P) introduced Core Earnings as a proprietary, uniform earnings metric, with the goal of improving financial reporting. The distinguishing feature of Core Earnings is its consistent treatment of seven adjustments to GAAP earnings for which there is no consensus adjustment by managers and analysts. We use stock price and return data to assess whether investors perceive Core Earnings to be more value relevant than GAAP earnings. The implementation of FASB 123R changed the calculation of GAAP and Core Earnings. This change allows us to assess the role of stock option expense in the valuation of earnings numbers by partitioning the sample into pre‐ and post‐FASB 123R periods and creating consistent measures of GAAP and Core Earnings. Our price results indicate that Core Earnings is more value relevant than GAAP earnings in the pre‐period after controlling for stock option expense, and in the post‐FASB 123R periods. The price results provide empirical evidence consistent with S&P's expectation that a uniformly calculated earnings measure is a more consistent and useful indicator of current performance and future earnings.

Extracting Sustainable Earnings from Profit Margins

Revenues and expenses are fundamentally proportional to one another, but are likely to be disproportionally affected by transitory items or economic shocks. We build on this observation and propose a new measure of sustainable earnings based on deviations from normal profit margins. While some other sustainable earnings metrics attempt to identify transitory components on a line-by-line basis, our measure, referred to as the intensity of core earnings (ICE), uses ratio analysis to extract the transitory portion of earnings from all line items. We find that the ICE, as measured here, is positively associated with earnings persistence, better earnings predictability, and stronger market reaction to unexpected earnings. We also find that our measure is positively associated with post-earnings announcement excess stock returns. Comparing our measure with an accrual-based measure of earnings quality, we find that, in general, the two metrics provide distinct incremental information relative to one another and in some instances our measure is better than an accrual-based measure in assessing earnings quality.

Earnings Management in India: Managers’ Fixation on Operating Profits

We present evidence that the managers of Indian firms fixate on operating profits, and thus manage such earnings. Specifically, they shift operating expenses to income-decreasing special items in order to inflate operating earnings (McVay, 2006. The Accounting Review, 81(3), 531). We also shed light on another form of classification shifting and find that the managers of Indian firms also engage in netting income-increasing special items against the core expenses in order to inflate core earnings. Given the environment of comparatively weaker corporate governance and investor protection, our results suggest that the magnitude of classification shifting is much more in Indian firms as compared to firms in the United States and East-Asian countries. We also find financial distress to be an important firm characteristic that is likely to influence the managers to engage in classification shifting, and find that financially distressed firms are more likely to engage in both types of classification shifting.

Earnings informativeness after financial statement restatements

Financial restatements may affect core earnings if the restatements involve revenue, cost of sales or ongoing expenses. Hence, restatements may impact information content of earnings. Using the earnings response coefficient (ERC) as a measure of the information content of earnings, we document a decline in ERCs in several quarters following the announcement of restatements. The decline in ERCs is especially evident in restatements that are unattributed to any source or attributed to the company, classified as fraud or no fraud, affect multiple accounts (pervasive) and more than one year. Overall, our results suggest that restatements that are especially severe cause investors to lose confidence in reported earnings and that these effects may persist for several quarters beyond the restatement.

The Information Content of Earnings Components: Evidence from the Chinese Stock Market

China's listed firms report substantial non-operating revenues and expenses. We argue that these non-core earnings should have different properties and different valuation implications than operating or core earnings. Furthermore, the different types of firm ownership may have differential impacts on the information content of earnings components. Based on data from 1996 to 2008, we find that core earnings are more persistent than non-core earnings. Because of this, core earnings have a greater association with contemporaneous stock returns. However, the stock market does not fully incorporate all the information in earnings; we find that core earnings are undervalued and non-core earnings are overvalued. This effect is much reduced for privately controlled listed firms. We develop an investment trading strategy to exploit these market inefficiencies.

On the Relevance of Earnings Components in Valuation and Forecasting

This paper articulates the links between relevance of an earnings component in forecasting (abnormal) earnings and its relevance in valuation in a nonlinear framework. The analysis shows that forecasting relevance does not imply valuation relevance even though valuation irrelevance is implied by forecasting irrelevance. Firstly, I consider an accounting information system where earnings components add up to a fully informative earnings number. Secondly, I analyze two accounting systems where a core earnings component is the relevant earnings construct for valuation and the second earnings component is irrelevant but may be predictable and relevant in forecasting other accounting items. I find that dividend displacement effect on earnings and the dynamics of individual earnings components are critical in this analysis.