The Relation between Market Values, Earnings Forecasts, and Reported Earnings

52 Pages Posted: 24 Oct 2000

See all articles by Gerald A. Feltham

Gerald A. Feltham

University of British Columbia

Joy Begley

University of British Columbia (UBC) - Sauder School of Business

Date Written: August 21, 2000

Abstract

Recently, much of the research into the relation between market values and accounting numbers has used, or at least made reference to, the residual income model (RIM). Two basic types of empirical research have developed. The "historical" type explores the relation between market values and reported accounting numbers, often using the linear dynamics in Ohlson (1995) and Feltham and Ohlson (1995, 1996). The "forecast" type explores the relation between market value and the present value of the book value of equity, a truncated sequence of residual income forecasts, and an estimate of the terminal value at the truncation date. The analysis in this paper integrates these two approaches. We expand the Feltham and Ohlson (1996) model by including one- and two-period-ahead residual income forecasts. This can be viewed as the use of forecasts in the "historical" model to infer "other" information about future revenues from past investments and about future growth opportunities. Alternatively, it can be viewed as the use of historical data (and the assumed dynamics) in the "forecast" to develop forecasts beyond the truncation period. In either case, the result is in a model in which the difference between market value and book value of equity is a function of current residual income, one- and two-period ahead residual income forecasts, current capital investment and start-of-period operating assets. The existence of both persistence in revenues from current and prior investments and growth in future positive NPV investment opportunities leads us to hypothesize a negative coefficient on the one-period ahead residual income forecast and a positive coefficient on the two-period-ahead residual income forecast. Our empirical results strongly support our hypotheses with respect to the forecast coefficients.

JEL Classification: G12, M41

Suggested Citation

Feltham, Gerald A. and Begley, Joy, The Relation between Market Values, Earnings Forecasts, and Reported Earnings (August 21, 2000). Sauder School of Business Working Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=242062 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.242062

Gerald A. Feltham (Contact Author)

University of British Columbia ( email )

2053 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Canada
604-822-8397 (Phone)
604-822-9470 (Fax)

Joy Begley

University of British Columbia (UBC) - Sauder School of Business ( email )

2053 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Canada

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
1,901
Abstract Views
5,772
Rank
13,637
PlumX Metrics