Information Transfer and Conference Calls

Abstract

A long-standing literature documents the existence of intra-industry capital market co-movements around earnings releases, yet the dynamics of these information transfers remain largely unexplored. We provide evidence on both the sources and the channels of information transfers by separating two distinct events within the reporting window, and by exploring potential mechanisms of information flows. First, we examine the intra-industry information transfer associated with quarterly earnings conference calls, using intra-day data to decouple their effects from those of the associated earnings announcements. We document that the co-movement of absolute and signed stock returns over the conference call windows of announcing firms and their industry peers are statistically and economically larger than the co-movement over the corresponding earnings announcement windows. Turning to mechanisms, we find that shared analyst coverage, coverage by analysts providing industry recommendations, shared institutional ownership, and joint financial press mentions are each individually and incrementally associated with higher rate of information transfer over both the earnings announcement and conference call windows. Additional analyses reveal that information transfer occurs both to peers that have already announced and those that are yet to announce, and that peer mentions and macroeconomic discussions are both significant contributors to the conference call information transfers.

Keywords: Conference calls, Information transfer, Intra-day, TAQ, Information intermediaries

JEL Classification: D83, M41