Earnings Announcements and Competing Information

This paper investigates whether competing information, primarily analyst reports, reduces the usefulness of earnings announcements. Inconsistent with the view that information in analyst reports substitutes for earnings announcements, we find a positive relation between absolute abnormal returns to the two types of disclosures. This positive relation also characterizes subsequent period analyst reports relative to current period earnings announcements. We also find that aggregate absolute reactions to both types of disclosures increased over 1986-1995. As a whole, these results provide little support for the view that the informativeness of earnings announcements is eroded by competing information in the form of analyst reports.