Earnings persistence in M&A transactions
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2018
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Accounting
Language
en
Pages
54
Series
Abstract
Subject This research studies earnings persistence in the context of business combinations. The study draws from the ongoing discussion of accounting information reliability and relevance after the adoption of FAS 142 standard for business combinations. Earnings persistence is studied by examining the rela-tionship of return-on-assets and its components to one-year-ahead return-on-assets. Further to test earnings persistence for companies that have done business combinations in our sample we divide our group in two sub samples based on acquired goodwill. We expect companies that have acquired goodwill to have lower earnings persistence due to write-offs of goodwill. In addition, cash flow and accruals’ earnings persistence is examined. Data and methodology The research was conducted as a single-country study including over 40 000 observations from the U.S. during 2002-2015. The hypotheses are tested with OLS regression. The financial information used in the analysis is from COMPUSTAT database. The basis of the variable formulation is Hribar & Collins’ (2002) cash flow approach. Findings The findings indicate that companies that have done business combinations have lower earnings persistence. More detailed examination shows that accrual component of earnings have stronger negative impact to earnings persistence compared to cash flow component when using cash flow information in computation of variables. Further investigation also indicates that discretionary ac-cruals have the most negative impact to future earnings persistence.Description
Thesis advisor
Jarva, HenryKeywords
earnings persistence, earnings management, business combinations, accruals