Conference Calls: an Empirical Analysis of Information Content and the Type of Disclosed News

Abstract

This article analyzes whether the type of news and the earnings persistence influence the amount of in formation that is voluntarily disclosed by the companies. As a proxy for voluntary disclosure we use the information content of the conference calls of the companies listed on the BM&F Bovespa from 2008 to 2015. The results indicate that the companies with bad news provide more information during the conference call (presentation section and questions & answers section) than the companies with good news. Moreover, were found evidence that the companies with less persistent positive earnings provide a larger amount of information than the companies with more persistent positive earnings. Regarding companies with negative earnings we did not find any relation between persistence and the informational content.

Keywords

• information content
• voluntary disclosure
• conference calls
• good and bad news
• prsistence