Analysts can determine whether to produce information on the firm according to the relative degree of economic benefits and cost stemming from infor- mation provided in a given information environment. Thus, the interrelationship between the factors o ...
Analysts can determine whether to produce information on the firm according to the relative degree of economic benefits and cost stemming from infor- mation provided in a given information environment. Thus, the interrelationship between the factors of information environment and information production could be a useful measure to infer the information providing motive of analysts. The purposes of this study are to analyse the determinants of analyst coverage and examine the roles and information providing motive of analysts in the capital market.
In Korean Stock Market with a concentrated ownership structure and high trading ratio of individual investors, the surveillance effect of the market to analysts could be lower than advanced capital market. This could make a difference on the roles of analysts in the market by influencing on their information providing motive. In general, the roles of analysts in the market could be divided into an information provider and an information intermediary. Analyst could play a role of information provider by reducing information asymmetry through providing non-public information and increasing the efficiency of the stock price. In contrast, analyst, instead of the management, could perform a role of information intermediary to spread firm’s public information into the market. In particular, the analyst’s motive of providing information may make a difference on their’ roles, and the difference can play a important role of increasing the market efficiency. For the reasons, this study focus on analysing the determinants of the analyst coverage and inferring the role of analysts in the Korean market in order to analyse analyst’s motive of providing information, in terms of information suppliers.
For an empirical analysis, the study analyses the determinant of analyst coverage with the sample of 1,907 companies having at least one analyst report published per year among the listed companies in Korean Exchange Market for 6 years, from 2005 to 2010. In this study, the number of reports and revision date, as a proxy of analyst coverage, are measured and established to dependent variables. And firm factors, the quality of accounting information, the degree of information asymmetry, investors trading form are chosen as explanatory variables. In the study, Fama- MacBeth regression analysis method is used to analyse how diverse information environment has an effect on the analyst coverage.
To sum up the results, they are as follows. Firstly, it is shown that analyst coverage has a positive relationship with the firm factors, such as firm size, trading volume, expense relating to intangible assets, and return on asset(ROA).
In other words, the economic benefits from information providing is larger, the information providing activities increase. In addition, the analyst coverage has a positive relationship with book to market value, debt ration, the number of firms in the industry, and has a negative relationship with the volatility of return. This imply that analyst coverage is determined to the cost of information providing more sensitively, rather than market demand. Generally, it is implied that the supply of analyst reports is increased in the firm, which analysts have a less cost of collecting information and have more benefits of information providing. Secondly, it is found that there are a positive relationship between value relevance and financial transparency and a negative relationship between discretionary accruals and profit variability. This imply that the more firm has high-quality public information, the more analysts’ information providing activities increases. Thirdly, information providing activities in analysts increase in the firm, with a low insider stake and dispersion of analysts’ earning forecast, and high trading ratio of institutional shareholders. That is, analysts would focus on providing information to the firm with less asymmetric information because they has a high motive to reduce the cost of information acquisition and adverse-selection by information providing. Finally, it is shown that information providing activities increase in the firm with low variance ratio and high turnover rate. This has an implication that analysts would provide more information to the firm with a great deal of irrational investors with the purpose of contributing to the profit-making of securities firm.
Generally, it is shown that analyst reports are increased in the firm, which has a great economic benefits from information providing, less cost for information gathering, the high quality of public information, less cost for adverse selection, and high volume of irrational investors. This results imply that analyst could act as a information intermediary, rather than information provider in Korean Stock Market. The study has a great significance in inferring the analyst’ role by examining the determinants to information coverage in recent information environment changed. Along with, the study could help in understanding the usefulness of accounting information, the tendency of overestimation in analyst, analyst’ informativeness, information environment, and the market efficiency.