TIMING THE DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION - MANAGEMENTS VIEW OF EARNINGS ANNOUNCEMENTS

Do managers think the timing of earnings announcements is significant? We surveyed top management on issues pertaining to this question and report the results in this article. About 50% of the firms responding maintain a fixed earnings announcement schedule (they release information on the second Friday after the close of a quarter, for example). Firms that vary announcement timing report that earnings levels that are unexpected have the most impact on the timing decision. Lower-than-expected earnings are more likely than higher-than-expected earnings to prompt a change in timing, and change of announcement date tends to happen more often than change in the time of release during the day. It is interesting that the pending release of economic or market information plays little role in determining when to announce earnings. Sample partitioning reveals that small firms and NASDAQ-traded firms are more likely to change announcement schedules than large firms or firms trading on the NYSE. These results may be interesting to analysts who might consider the timing of earnings announcements to be important information, to managers who may wonder whether timing of information disclosure is a common practice among their peers, and to academicians who can compare these survey results to other findings.