Do Reconciliations Of Segment Earnings Affect Stock Prices?

While SFAS No. 131 is intended to increase the transparency of financial reporting using a “management approach,” it may reduce shareholders’ ability to interpret segment disclosures relative to the ‘industry approach’ employed under SFAS No.14. This study investigates whether segment reconciliation differences affect stock prices and whether abnormal returns can be earned using information about two components of earnings: aggregated segment earnings and segment earnings reconciliations. We compute reconciliations as the difference between firm-level consolidated earnings and aggregated segment-level earnings. Firms that report negative SERs have greater sales and profitability, greater return on equity, as well as more operating cash flows and firm growth. This suggests that firms that report aggregated segment earnings greater than firm-level consolidated earnings may be better off financially. Our findings show that mispricing does occur when firms report positive SERs by the market, underestimating the segment earnings reconciliation component of earnings persistence. Investors can also earn positive abnormal returns when investors take a long (short) position with the portfolio with the highest (lowest) absolute SERs. On the contrary, we find investors earn negative abnormal returns when firms report negative SERs. Collectively, this study provides evidence that mispricing occurs and that investors over/underestimate the importance and/or persistence of segment earnings reconciliations

Managers Segment Financial Reporting Choice: An Analysis Of Firms Segment Reconciliations

Under SFAS No. 131, a company is required to provide a reconciliation of the total of the reportable segments profit or loss to the firms consolidated income. This paper investigates these segment disclosures and related determinants of managers segment financial reporting choices. We focus on managers decisions to report segment-to-firm level reconciliations (i.e., segment reconciliations (SERs)) differences between firm-level and aggregated segment-level earnings. On average, we find that SERs are significant when the differences are not equal to zero. Firms with higher agency costs and greater accruals are less likely to report segment reconciliations. However, firms that have a greater number of segments, larger firms, and firms with higher leverage, losses, and greater earnings volatility are more likely to report SER?0. Consistent with managers having some segment reporting discretion, our overall findings suggest a managers segment reporting choice is partly driven by agency costs. Interestingly, among firms with reported segment reconciliations, firms with higher agency costs are more likely to report positive SERs. Consequently, this study documents a relation between proxies for agency costs and managers decisions to report segment reconciliations. Policy implications and suggestions for future research are discussed in the paper

Investing In Accounting: A Call For Professional Involvement In Higher Education

The current financial crisis has created serious repercussions for accounting education. Public universities have lost funding and initiated huge budget cuts. These drastic cutbacks have resulted in the losses of courses, enrollment, and faculty. These losses will translate into inaccessibility of education will reduce the future accounting work force. To recover from the recession, well trained accountants are critical to provide the financial fundamentals for businesses. While most of us understand that an investment in accounting education is an investment in successful business, effective practices for recruitment are needed in a time of scarce resources. In this paper, we would like to focus on the difficulties occurring in accounting education, which will negatively affect business. Furthermore, we would strongly encourage companies to continuously reach out to potential employees and support accounting education. Some suggestions are provided for cost saving avenues to reduce recruiting costs and develop high quality accounting professionals