The implications of earnings quality for market reactions to annual earnings announcements

This paper assesses the impact of earnings quality on market responses to annual earnings announcements. Earnings quality is measured by the ratio of earnings to funds from operations. The difference in the association between forecast errors and excess returns across the high/low quality earnings subsamples is found to be statistically significant; there is a greater market response to earnings announcements of high-quality firms than to low-quality firms. Hence, earnings quality as measured by the ratio of earnings to funds from operations, is found to have pricing implications. The results are robust across two regression models: OLS on returns ordered in announcement time and SUR/GLS on returns ordered in calendar time.Business, Sauder School ofGraduat