IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/abacus/v38y2002i2p280-295.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Information Content of Management’s Prospective Comments in Financially Distressed Companies: A Note

Author

Listed:
  • El’Fred Boo
  • Roger Simnett

Abstract

Prior research revealed management’s prospective comments (MPCs) in annual reports to be informative with respect to companies’ future performance. As the finding was derived from analyses of random samples of companies, it is not known whether it is generalizable to companies that are experiencing financial distress. This study investigates whether disclosure of MPCs in the annual reports of companies experiencing financial distress is informative with regard to their future viability. The MPCs of 140 Australian public companies that had experienced significant losses were identified and then categorized as optimistic, pessimistic, mixed or no MPCs. Results from logistic regression analysis indicate that such MPCs provided information incremental to that contained in historical financial information about companies’ future viability. It was also found that, while companies that did not disclose any MPCs were more likely to fail than companies that disclosed optimistic MPCs, they were as likely to fail as companies that disclosed pessimistic or mixed MPCs. This suggests that financially distressed companies avoid disclosing MPCs in the absence of an optimistic outlook, a finding that supports Darrough and Stoughton’s (1990) theory of selective disclosure.

Suggested Citation

  • El’Fred Boo & Roger Simnett, 2002. "The Information Content of Management’s Prospective Comments in Financially Distressed Companies: A Note," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 38(2), pages 280-295, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:abacus:v:38:y:2002:i:2:p:280-295
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-6281.00109
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6281.00109
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-6281.00109?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elsayed, Mohamed & Elshandidy, Tamer, 2020. "Do narrative-related disclosures predict corporate failure? Evidence from UK non-financial publicly quoted firms," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    2. Leung, Sidney & Parker, Lee & Courtis, John, 2015. "Impression management through minimal narrative disclosure in annual reports," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 275-289.
    3. Bruynseels, Liesbeth & Willekens, Marleen, 2012. "The effect of strategic and operating turnaround initiatives on audit reporting for distressed companies," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 223-241.
    4. Ingrid E. Fisher & Margaret R. Garnsey & Mark E. Hughes, 2016. "Natural Language Processing in Accounting, Auditing and Finance: A Synthesis of the Literature with a Roadmap for Future Research," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 157-214, July.
    5. G. Meeks & J. G. Meeks, 2009. "Self‐Fulfilling Prophecies of Failure: The Endogenous Balance Sheets of Distressed Companies," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 45(1), pages 22-43, March.
    6. Elizabeth Carson & Neil Fargher & Yuyu Zhang, 2016. "Trends in Auditor Reporting in Australia: A Synthesis and Opportunities for Research," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 26(3), pages 226-242, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:abacus:v:38:y:2002:i:2:p:280-295. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0001-3072 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.