Predictive ability of accruals before and after IFRS in the Brazilian stock market

ABSTRACT This study aimed to analyze and assess the predictive ability of discretionary accruals (DAs) and non-discretionary accruals (NDAs) for forecasting future cash flows before and after the convergence with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Brazil. The study is warranted due to the scarcity of research in Brazil on the subject and is relevant because it aims to shed light on whether the changes occurring due to convergence with IFRS in Brazil have improved accounting quality. The accounting choices of managers and accountants in the Brazilian stock market, enabled by IFRS, contribute to an apparent improvement in accounting quality in terms of reliability, the faithful representation of entities’ equity and financial positions, and in particular, the predictive ability for forecasting future cash flows. The population was composed of publicly traded companies listed on the Bovespa and São Paulo Stock, Commodities, and Futures Exchange (BM&FBovespa) in 2004 to 2007 and 2010 to 2015. The non-probability convenience sample is composed of 715 enterprises, once companies from the “finance and insurance” and “funds” sectors and even those considered as “holding” were excluded. The data were pooled by year, as they contain different companies over the time series (unbalanced panel data). The DAs and NDAs produced prior to full convergence with IFRS are negative and statistically significant for predicting future cash flows in the Brazilian stock market, which indicated opportunistic/contractual earnings management. One of the possible explanations for this would be the influence of government tax authorities on Brazilian accounting norms, which could induce managers to manipulate accounting results with the aim of reducing earnings in order to pay fewer taxes, for example. The DAs and NDAs produced after IFRS are positive and statistically significant for predicting future cash flows in the Brazilian stock market, signaling the motivation of discretionary accounting choices under the informational aspect. Current DAs and NDAs add informational power compared to current aggregate accruals. It has also been observed that the current DAs and NDAs originating after IFRS in Brazil, compared to current aggregate accruals, have an informational gain in relation to those produced before.