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EFFECT OF EARNINGS QUALITY PROPERTIES ON SHARE PRICE OF LISTED MANUFACTURING FIRMS IN NIGERIA
Abstract:
Earnings quality has emerged as an issue of interest to analyst, investors, managers and other market participants in view of the fact that it is one of the most striking and challenging issues in studies related to Accounting and finance. While managers are much concerned about meeting analyst forecast by maintaining sustainable growth of the companies as means to protect themselves analysts are interested on how best to measure the quality of earnings. This in order to maximise the portfolio of investors who now more than ever increasingly demand for information about quality of earnings and its association with share price and returns. This study investigated the effect of earnings quality properties on share price of listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The population of the study comprised all the 37 quoted manufacturing firms on the Nigeria Stock Exchange as at 31st December 2013 on which filters were employed to arrive at an adjusted population of 20 firms. The entire firms within the adjusted population were studied based on census approach. Panel data were extracted from the annual financial statements of the firms for the period 2009 – 2013 to examine the effect of earnings quality properties represented by accruals quality, income smoothing, earnings variability, timeliness of earnings and earnings conservativism on share price of the firms. The result of the robust Ordinary Least Square (OLS) revealed that of the five earnings quality attributes used in the study, accruals quality and timeliness of earnings have significant inverse relationship with share price, while earnings variability has significant positive relationship with share price. The study further revealed that income smoothing and earnings conservativism have negative but insignificant association with share price of listed manufacturing ix firms in Nigeria. Based on the result, the study recommended among others that the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) should continually subject the earnings of manufacturing sector to quality tests to insulate the investing public from possible rip off. Also, management of manufacturing firms should avoid undue earnings management practice by limiting their choice of accounting treatment alternatives to the provision of IFRS in order to improve financial information quality that will reduce information asymmetry and consequently lead to share price improvement. Furthermore, the Board of Directors of manufacturing firms should increase their monitoring capacity towards discretionary earnings management activities by increasing the number of experts in accounting and finance on the Board to at least three in order to improve earnings quality. The study contributed to both theory and practice by testing the applicability of the Modigliani and Miller‟s theory of stock valuation using Nigerian data and validated the theory with respect to earnings quality. In addition to contribution to the literature on the nature and extent of relationship between earnings quality and share price, the study also provided market participants with guidance on factors to look out for when evaluating firms‟ financial reports
EFFECT OF EARNINGS QUALITY PROPERTIES ON SHARE PRICE OF LISTED MANUFACTURING FIRMS IN NIGERIA
