Analysts’ Coverage and Corporate Managers Opportunistic Disclosure Behavior in Earnings Press Release

This research aims to examine whether analysts’ coverage could possibly serve as a monitoring mechanism that would help improve the credibility of narrative reporting namely, earnings press release, by reducing the presence of impression management practices. Furthermore, this research aims to examine whether investors can see through managers' strategic disclosure choices in earning press release and penalize firms for this opportunistic behavior. Impression management practices are to be captured using Huang et al.,(2014) measure of abnormal positive tone (ABTONE) from the residuals of a tone model that controls for firm quantitative fundamentals including financial performance, growth prospects, and firm operating risk and complexity. Consistent with the monitoring effect hypotheses, the results have shown that analysts' coverage has a significant negative impact on impression management as captured by the ABTONE measure. Besides, the results have shown that ABTONE has a significant positive impact on firms’ quarterly stock prices.