Extra Attention to Earliest Quarterly Earnings Announcements

Does the market react most strongly to the earliest quarterly earnings announcements? In their October 2019 paper entitled “Calendar Rotations: A New Approach for Studying the Impact of Timing using Earnings Announcements”, Suzie Noh, Eric So and Rodrigo Verdi study effects of the relative order of U.S. firm quarterly earnings announcements, which vary systematically for some firms according to the day of the week of the first day of a month. Specifically, they qualify firms by identifying those firms that exhibit systematic earnings announcement schedules (such as Friday of the fourth week after quarter ends, sometimes set in firm bylaws) for at least four consecutive same fiscal quarters. They then for each firm each fiscal quarter:

• Calculate EA Order, ranking of earnings announcement date divided by number of firms with the same fiscal quarter-end.
• Compute change in EA Order compared to the same fiscal quarter last year, indicating a calendar acceleration or delay in announcement. Positive (negative) change in EA Order indicates delay (acceleration)
• Examine effects of change in EA Order on media coverage (number of articles), stock trading volume and stock return from one trading day before to one trading day after earnings announcement.

Using sample of 76,622 firm-quarters during 2004 through 2017, they find that: (more…)