Financial restatements and sell-side analysts' stock recommendations: evidence from Malaysia
International Journal of Managerial Finance
ISSN: 1743-9132
Article publication date: 3 April 2020
Issue publication date: 18 June 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of financial restatements on the sell-side analysts' stock recommendations.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample of this study is based on a dataset from a panel of 246 Malaysian public listed companies for the period 2008 to 2013 (651 company-year observations). This study employs feasible generalized least squares regression.
Findings
This study finds a negative and significant relationship between restated companies and sell-side analysts' stock recommendations, which means that sell-side analysts issue less favorable stock recommendations for restated companies.
Practical implications
The findings based on observations from an emerging economy complement the results of the US studies that analysts revise their earnings forecasts or recommendations downwards or drop coverage following financial restatements. The results of this study should be useful to capital market participants in understanding how analysts perceive and evaluate restated companies.
Originality/value
This paper expands the literature on financial restatements consequences in an emerging market which is largely unstudied. Prior research on analyst behavior towards restatements has focused on the consequences of restatements in terms of analyst following and forecast accuracy and dispersion. This study examines if and how the restatements affect the analysts' final output as reflected in the recommendation opinion, an area that has so far received little attention.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
We thank the participants who provided feedbacks on earlier drafts of the paper presented at the JCAE doctoral colloquium in Bangkok, Thailand in January 2016 and the Financial Reporting and Business Communication (FRBC) Conference in Bristol, UK in July 2018. This research was supported by Ministry of Education (MOE) through Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS/1/2019/SS01/UUM/02/27).
Citation
Qasem, A., Aripin, N. and Wan-Hussin, W.N. (2020), "Financial restatements and sell-side analysts' stock recommendations: evidence from Malaysia", International Journal of Managerial Finance, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 501-524. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMF-05-2019-0183
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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