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Do Managers Learn From Analyst Participation In Conference Calls?, Amanda Aw Zhi Xin Yong, Young Jun Cho, Holly I. Yang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

While research finds that conference calls are informative to the market and analysts, they can also be informative to managers as analysts’ questions can provide a feedback effect. Using a sample of conference call transcripts from 2002 to 2018, we find that greater analyst participation, as measured by the number of words spoken by analysts relative to the number of words spoken by managers during conference calls, is associated with higher accuracy in managers’ subsequent earnings forecasts. Cross-sectional tests show that this positive association is more pronounced when managers use more uncertain words in conference calls, when analysts use a …