Perception and usage behavior of financial analysts on public and private information.

This study examines the perception and usage behavior of financial analysts on public and private information. Most prior empirical studies investigated capabilities of financial analysts to forecast earnings and factors affecting analysts' earnings forecasts by using archival database of analysts' earnings forecasts. And a few prior survey studies also attempted to account for the above mentioned research questions. While the type of research based on large-sample archival analysis ensures statistical power and cross-sectional variation, it has a limitation on directly identifying the perception of analysts on information in the process of producing their earnings forecasts. By using survey method, this study investigates how analysts perceive and evaluate the public and private information and what specific information they mostly use in formulating their earnings forecasts. The survey data was collected from 185 financial analysts working in 15 securities brokerages as of Feb. 2012. The major results are as follows. First, while financial analysts highly evaluate the reliability of current disclosure system, they do not have a high opinion of the disclosure system in terms of timeliness and full disclosure. Second, they partly rely on private information in formulating their earning forecasts to compensate for the lack of timeliness and full disclosure of public information. A significantly positive relationship is also observed between analysts' career and the extent of usage of private information. Lastly, they consider income statement, statement of cash flow, operating income, sales revenue, price earnings ratio, and return on equity as important information among public information when analyzing a company. Dealing with the perception and usage behavior of financial analysts on public and private information for the first time, this study contributes to the existing literature on analysts' earnings forecasts by collecting and analysing relatively large and extensive survey data. This study sheds some light on how analysts evaluate current disclosure system, how they perceive and evaluate the public and private information in terms of reliability, timeliness, and full disclosure and what specific information they consider important in the set of public and private information. Specifically, the survey results of analysts' perception and usage behavior on private information can provide a meaningful implication for future research. The results of this study have important implications to regulatory authorities, academic community, and business world by providing the perception and usage behavior of analysts on information who are one of the most important user groups of financial information under current disclosure system.