The Effects of Corporate Financial Disclosure on Stock Prices: A Case Study of Korea’s Compulsory Preliminary Earnings Announcements

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of Korea’s compulsory preliminary earnings announcements on stock prices using individual corporate financial disclosure data. Korea’s compulsory preliminary earnings announcements are similar to the US’s fair disclosures in that they are preliminary settlement disclosures. Disclosure regulation aims to prevent insider trading and resolve information asymmetry among investors by promptly disclosing unconfirmed internal settlement information prior to an external audit. The disclosure of such changes in profit or loss is generally expected to affect stock prices. Many studies have analyzed the relationship between accounting profit disclosure and stock prices, but most have focused on the relationship between net profit disclosure and stock price without considering other disclosure information such as sales and operating profit. In addition, previous studies analyzed the information effect of accounting profits based on annual reports, which are based on analysts’ predicted values and limited datasets. This study investigates the impact of Korea’s compulsory disclosure on stock prices through a multiple regression analysis, considering three types of accounting information, including sales, operating profit, and net profit, based on actual announcement data and daily trading volumes. The effect of corporate financial disclosure might vary with stock market type and industry sector. For this reason, we analyze the relationship between financial disclosure and stock prices for different stock market types and industry sectors. Results show that sales information affected KOSPI-listed companies’ stock prices, and operating profit information affected KOSDAQ-listed companies’ stock prices. In terms of financial market efficiency, the results show weak-form efficiency for both the KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets in general. However, this implies that there is still information asymmetry in sales information for the KOSPI, which consists of large and valued stocks and is not completely efficient, whereas information asymmetry might occur in operating profit information for the KOSDAQ, which consists of relatively small-to-medium innovative growing companies. In addition, results show that operating profits affect manufacturing industries’ stock prices, and that trading volumes significantly impact stock prices for all markets and industries.