Voluntary disclosure of intangibles and analysts’ earnings forecasts and recommendations

Anis Maaloul, Walid Ben Amar and Daniel Zeghal

Journal of Applied Accounting Research, 2016, vol. 17, issue 4, 421-439

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between voluntary disclosure of intangibles and financial analysts’ earnings forecasts properties. Design/methodology/approach - Disclosures about intangible assets were hand-collected through content analysis of annual reports of a sample of US non-financial firms, while analysts’ earnings forecasts properties were collected from Bloomberg Professional database. The authors relied on correlation and multivariate regression analyses to test the research hypotheses. Findings - The results show that increased intangible disclosures affect analysts’ earnings forecasts accuracy, dispersion, and favourable consensus recommendations. However, this effect varies according to the nature of intangible assets. Practical implications - The results may be of interest to different market participants such as corporate managers, financial analysts, and standards setting bodies that recently published guidelines on voluntary disclosure of intangibles. Originality/value - This study develops a new comprehensive index to measure the content of narrative disclosures about a large number of intangibles, such as human, structural, and relational assets. The findings contribute to the current debate on the value-relevance of narrative disclosures on intangibles to investors and financial analysts.

Keywords: Intangibles; Financial analysts; Disclosure; Consensus recommendation; Forecast dispersion; Forecast error (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jaarpp:jaar-10-2014-0105

DOI: 10.1108/JAAR-10-2014-0105

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Applied Accounting Research is currently edited by Associate Professor Orthodoxia Kyriacou

More articles in Journal of Applied Accounting Research from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().