Timing the Disclosure of Information: Management's View of Earnings Announcements

Carl R. Chen and Nancy J. Mohan

Financial Management, 1994, vol. 23, issue 3

Abstract: Do managers think the timing of earnings announcements is significant? We surveyed top management on issues pertaining to this question and report the results in this article. About 50% of the firms responding maintain a fixed earnings announcement schedule (they release information on the second Friday after the close of a quarter, for example). Firms that vary announcement timing report that earnings levels that are unexpected have the most impact on the timing decision. Lower-than-expected earnings are more likely than higher-than-expected earnings to prompt a change in timing, and change of announcement date tends to happen more often than change in the time of release during the day. It is interesting that the pending release of economic or market information plays little role in determining when to announce earnings. Sample partitioning reveals that small firms and NASDAQ-traded firms are more likely to change announcement schedules than large firms or firms trading on the NYSE. These results may be interesting to analysts who might consider the timing of earnings announcements to be important information, to managers who may wonder whether timing of information disclosure is a common practice among their peers, and to academicians who can compare these survey results to other findings.

Date: 1994
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:fma:fmanag:chen94

Access Statistics for this article

Financial Management is currently edited by Bill Christie

More articles in Financial Management from Financial Management Association University of South Florida 4202 E. Fowler Ave. COBA #3331 Tampa, FL 33620. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Courtney Connors ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).