The role of disaggregation of earnings in stock valuation and earnings forecasting

Working paper; also deposited in SSRN ArchiveThis paper compares and contrasts two accounting information systems, the aggregate earnings system and the disaggregated cash flow/accrual system, examining their relative performance in stock valuation and in forecasting of earnings. It finds, in general, that the forecasts of earnings and predicted market values from the cash flow and accrual system have smaller forecasting errors than those from the aggregate earnings system. The adjusted R-squareds from the disaggregated system are in the main higher than those from the aggregated system when considering the explanatory power of the model-predicted values. The results also show that the cash flow and accrual system forecasts dominate the aggregate earnings system forecasts in a large majority of industries

Conservatism in residual income models: theory and supporting evidence

PublishedArticle"This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Accounting and Business Research on 29 May 2015, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00014788.2015.1009869."In this paper, we develop a framework for evaluating the impact of conservative accounting on the structure of residual income models of equity valuation. We explore specific examples of both unconditional and conditional conservatism and observe a common mathematical structure. We proceed to generalise our model and identify the joint dependency of conservatism and the persistence of abnormal earnings on the weights attached to book values, earnings and dividends. We are able to show theoretically the likely numerical impact of conservatism on price-earnings ratios and under valuations produced by residual income models. We investigate empirically the interaction between conservatism and persistence and find they accord well with the theory developed. We briefly discuss the implications for testing of the effect of conservatism on valuation and linear information dynamics

The implied growth rates and country risk premium: evidence from Chinese stock markets

AcceptedArticle in Press“The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11156-014-0450-8”."Realized stock market returns are volatile and poor reflections of economic growth and investor expectations in China. In this paper, we estimate simultaneously the implied long run growth rate and cost of equity capital for listed Chinese firms over the period 2004-2012. We find that the implied mean growth rate in earnings is around 10 % and the mean implied cost of capital is about 14.6 %. These suggest that the implied growth rates from companies' fundamentals are in line with the economic growth and the implied cost of capital is consistent with investors' expectations. Comparing with estimates for the US markets, we find that the mean country equity risk premium for this largest emerging market is about 6.5 %. Our study has important implications to the Chinese policy makers and international investors. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

On the relevance of earnings components in valuation and forecasting

Pre-print also submitted to SSRN Archive. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/s11156-013-0347-yThis 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

Terminal valuations, growth rates and the implied cost of capital

This article is published with open access at Springerlink.comWe develop a model based on the notion that prices lead earnings, allowing for a simultaneous estimation of the implied growth rate and the cost of equity capital for US industrial sectors. The major difference between our approach and that in prior literature is that ours avoids the necessity to make assumptions about terminal values and consequently about future growth rates. In fact, growth rates are an endogenous variable, which is estimated simultaneously with the implied cost of equity capital. Since we require only 1-year-ahead forecasts of earnings and no assumptions about dividend payouts, our methodology allows us to estimate ex ante aggregate growth and risk premia over a larger sample of firms than has previously been possible. Our estimate of the risk premium being between 3.1 and 3.9 % is at the lower end of recent estimates, reflecting the inclusion of these short-lived companies. Our estimate of the long run growth is from 4.2 to 4.7 %

Choosing a valuation operator for pricing assets with long-short spreads: The impact of transaction costs and taxes

This paper articulates two general approaches to no-arbitrage asset pricing in a market with transaction costs and taxes. Prior work recognises a multiplicity of valuation operators by either ruling out the consideration of investors' preferences or ignoring the term structure of valuation operators in the presence of market frictions. While investors may belong to different tax classes, a legitimate question has been raised regarding which valuation operator should be used by an individual investor. The analysis links the convex structure of valuation operators to investors' marginal utilities at the optimal consumption level. It establishes a principle for choosing a valuation operator from among a multiplicity of operators for a tax-class specific investo

Valuation weights, linear dynamics and conservatism: an empirical analysis

Pre-print version. The definitive version is available via the DOI in this recordResidual income models provide an important theoretical link between equity valuation and financial statement variables. While various researchers have developed models of how accounting policy impacts on the structure of these models, empirical support for these models is at best weak and frequently contradictory. In this paper, we develop an analytical model, which identifies the dependency between valuation weights in residual income models and the associated structure of earnings information dynamics and accounting conservatism. In contrast to many earlier studies, we find strong evidence of conservatism in our reformulation of the linear dynamics. We proceed to test our predictions of the dependency of the weights on two measures of conservatism, the conventional measure of price-to-book ratio and the recent measure of a C-Score index developed by Khan and Watts (2009) and find that the empirical results accord well with our theoretical predictions in the case of the former but not the latter measure