IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jaecon/v74y2022i1s0165410122000210.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Engagement in earnings conference calls

Author

Listed:
  • Rennekamp, Kristina M.
  • Sethuraman, Mani
  • Steenhoven, Blake A.

Abstract

Research on conference calls documents that the question and answer (Q&A) portion is informative to markets. However, prior studies focus on the attributes of the participating individuals, primarily managers and analysts. We instead use the conversation as our unit of analysis, and examine whether conversational engagement between managers and analysts in earnings calls is informative to market participants. Using an experiment, we first demonstrate that linguistic style matching (LSM), a form of verbal coordination, is a reasonable empirical proxy for conversational engagement. We next use a quasi-experiment to confirm that investors can detect differences in engagement. Finally, using a hand-collected archival dataset comprised of audio recordings and textual transcripts from over 2400 earnings calls, we show that LSM in manager-analyst conversations during the Q&A is positively associated with absolute stock returns during the conversation, suggesting that conversations with greater engagement are more informative to capital markets and facilitate price formation.

Suggested Citation

  • Rennekamp, Kristina M. & Sethuraman, Mani & Steenhoven, Blake A., 2022. "Engagement in earnings conference calls," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jaecon:v:74:y:2022:i:1:s0165410122000210
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2022.101498
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165410122000210
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jacceco.2022.101498?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Atiase, Rk, 1985. "Predisclosure Information, Firm Capitalization, And Security Price Behavior Around Earnings Announcements," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 21-36.
    2. Stephan Hollander & Maarten Pronk & Erik Roelofsen, 2010. "Does Silence Speak? An Empirical Analysis of Disclosure Choices During Conference Calls," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 531-563, June.
    3. William J. Mayew, 2008. "Evidence of Management Discrimination Among Analysts during Earnings Conference Calls," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 627-659, June.
    4. Frankel, R & Johnson, M & Skinner, DJ, 1999. "An empirical examination of conference calls as a voluntary disclosure medium," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 133-150.
    5. Brian J. Bushee & Ian D. Gow & Daniel J. Taylor, 2018. "Linguistic Complexity in Firm Disclosures: Obfuscation or Information?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 85-121, March.
    6. Price, S. McKay & Doran, James S. & Peterson, David R. & Bliss, Barbara A., 2012. "Earnings conference calls and stock returns: The incremental informativeness of textual tone," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 992-1011.
    7. Bozanic, Zahn & Roulstone, Darren T. & Van Buskirk, Andrew, 2018. "Management earnings forecasts and other forward-looking statements," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 1-20.
    8. Tim Loughran & Jay Ritter, 2004. "Why Has IPO Underpricing Changed Over Time?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 33(3), Fall.
    9. Brown, Lawrence D. & Call, Andrew C. & Clement, Michael B. & Sharp, Nathan Y., 2019. "Managing the narrative: Investor relations officers and corporate disclosure✰," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 58-79.
    10. Libby, Robert & Bloomfield, Robert & Nelson, Mark W., 2002. "Experimental research in financial accounting," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 27(8), pages 775-810, November.
    11. Elizabeth Blankespoor & Ed Dehaan & John Wertz & Christina Zhu, 2019. "Why Do Individual Investors Disregard Accounting Information? The Roles of Information Awareness and Acquisition Costs," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 53-84, March.
    12. Li, Feng & Minnis, Michael & Nagar, Venky & Rajan, Madhav, 2014. "Knowledge, compensation, and firm value: An empirical analysis of firm communication," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 96-116.
    13. Robert Libby & Kristina Rennekamp, 2012. "Self‐Serving Attribution Bias, Overconfidence, and the Issuance of Management Forecasts," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 197-231, March.
    14. O. E. Barndorff-Nielsen & P. Reinhard Hansen & A. Lunde & N. Shephard, 2009. "Realized kernels in practice: trades and quotes," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 12(3), pages 1-32, November.
    15. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2011. "When Is a Liability Not a Liability? Textual Analysis, Dictionaries, and 10‐Ks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 35-65, February.
    16. Feng Li, 2010. "The Information Content of Forward‐Looking Statements in Corporate Filings—A Naïve Bayesian Machine Learning Approach," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(5), pages 1049-1102, December.
    17. William J. Mayew & Mohan Venkatachalam, 2012. "The Power of Voice: Managerial Affective States and Future Firm Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 1-44, February.
    18. Allen H. Huang & Reuven Lehavy & Amy Y. Zang & Rong Zheng, 2018. "Analyst Information Discovery and Interpretation Roles: A Topic Modeling Approach," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(6), pages 2833-2855, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Alexopoulos, Michelle & Han, Xinfen & Kryvtsov, Oleksiy & Zhang, Xu, 2024. "More than words: Fed Chairs’ communication during congressional testimonies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    2. Pelster, Matthias & Val, Joel, 2024. "Can ChatGPT assist in picking stocks?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    3. Xie, Nan & Xu, Qifa & Jiang, Cuixia & Yang, Shanlin, 2023. "The determinants and consequences of firms’ boilerplate answers: Evidence from online interactive platforms in China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(PD).
    4. Zhang, Shengpeng & Li, Yaokuang & Liang, Ruixin & He, Yu, 2024. "Does management tone matter in information disclosure? Evidence from IPO online roadshows in the SSE STAR market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    5. Liu, Qigui & Chi, Wenqiang & Wang, Junyi, 2024. "How informative is question-and-answer similarity to financial analysts? Evidence from Chinese earnings communication conferences," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Devrimi Kaya & Christian Maier & Tobias Böhmer, 2020. "Empirische Kapitalmarktforschung zu Conference Calls: Eine Literaturanalyse [Empirical Capital Market Research on Conference Calls: A Literature Review]," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 72(2), pages 183-212, June.
    2. John Donovan & Jared Jennings & Kevin Koharki & Joshua Lee, 2021. "Measuring credit risk using qualitative disclosure," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 815-863, June.
    3. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    4. Michał Dzieliński & Alexander F. Wagner & Richard J. Zeckhauser, 2017. "Straight Talkers and Vague Talkers: The Effects of Managerial Style in Earnings Conference Calls," NBER Working Papers 23425, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Matthew Bamber & Santhosh Abraham, 2020. "On the “Realities” of Investor‐Manager Interactivity: Baudrillard, Hyperreality, and Management Q&A Sessions†," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(2), pages 1290-1325, June.
    6. Mansouri, Sasan, 2021. "Does firm's silence drive media's attention away?," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242433, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Bhagwat, Vineet & Shirley, Sara E. & Stark, Jeffrey R., 2024. "Task-oriented speech and information processing," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    8. Francois Brochet & Kalin Kolev & Alina Lerman, 2018. "Information transfer and conference calls," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 907-957, September.
    9. Allee, Kristian D. & Do, Chuong & Sterin, Mikhail, 2021. "Product market competition, disclosure framing, and casting in earnings conference calls," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1).
    10. Blankespoor, Elizabeth, 2022. "Understanding investor interaction with firm information: A discussion of Lee and Zhong (2022)," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2).
    11. Call, Andrew C. & Sharp, Nathan Y. & Shohfi, Thomas D., 2021. "Which buy-side institutions participate in public earnings conference calls? Implications for capital markets and sell-side coverage," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    12. De Franco, Gus & Shohfi, Thomas & Xu, Da & Zhu, Zhiwei (Vivi), 2023. "Fixed income conference calls," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1).
    13. Kristian D. Allee & Matthew D. Deangelis, 2015. "The Structure of Voluntary Disclosure Narratives: Evidence from Tone Dispersion," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 241-274, May.
    14. Ian D. Gow & David F. Larcker & Anastasia A. Zakolyukina, 2021. "Non‐Answers During Conference Calls," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(4), pages 1349-1384, September.
    15. Perico Ortiz, Daniel & Schnaubelt, Matthias & Seifert, Oleg, 2023. "A topic modeling perspective on investor uncertainty," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 04/2023, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    16. Do, Chuong, 2024. "Financial analysts' information discovery: A study of manager-analyst interactions in conference calls," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    17. Andrew Todd & James Bowden & Yashar Moshfeghi, 2024. "Text‐based sentiment analysis in finance: Synthesising the existing literature and exploring future directions," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(1), March.
    18. Blau, Benjamin M. & DeLisle, Jared R. & Price, S. McKay, 2015. "Do sophisticated investors interpret earnings conference call tone differently than investors at large? Evidence from short sales," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 203-219.
    19. Chen, Yuan & Han, Dongmei & Zhou, Xiaofeng, 2023. "Mining the emotional information in the audio of earnings conference calls : A deep learning approach for sentiment analysis of securities analysts' follow-up behavior," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    20. Jason V. Chen & Itay Kama & Reuven Lehavy, 2019. "A contextual analysis of the impact of managerial expectations on asymmetric cost behavior," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 665-693, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Conference calls; Linguistic style matching; Engagement; Price formation; Market microstructure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M40 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - General
    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting

    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:eee:jaecon:v:74:y:2022:i:1:s0165410122000210. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jae .

    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.