When managers revise earnings guidance between earnings announcements, they choose not only what to disclose but also where to disclose—in a standalone release, a guidance call, an investor conference, or an analyst/investor (A/I) day. These venues differ in audience, format, and visibility, raising the question of whether venue choice is a strategic communication decision. In a large sample of unbundled revisions, we find that managers use calls for relatively large negative revisions and when litigation risk is higher and that they use conferences and A/I days for smaller revisions and when analyst disagreement is greater. Textual analysis reveals that calls feature cautious, litigious language for both upward and downward revisions, whereas conference and A/I day communications remain optimistic. In line with these framing differences, calls are associated with amplified reaction to negative news and are followed by more favorable earnings surprises, suggestive of effective expectation management, whereas conferences and A/I days are associated with muted reactions and reduced analyst dispersion and are followed by less favorable surprises. Our findings suggest that venue choice is a dimension of disclosure strategy for managers and an informative signal for investors.

After decades of de-prioritizing shareholders’ economic interests and low corporate profitability, Japan introduced the JPX-Nikkei400 in 2014. The index highlighted the country’s “best-run” companies by annually selecting the 400 most profitable of its large and liquid firms. We find that managers competed for inclusion in the index by significantly increasing return on equity (ROE), and they did so at least in part due to their reputational or status concerns. The ROE increase was predominantly driven by improvements in margins, which were in turn partially driven by cutting research and development (R&D) intensity. Our findings suggest that indexes can affect managerial behavior through reputational or status incentives.

This study provides the first large-scale study of the performance of expected-return proxies (ERPs) internationally. Analyst-forecast-based ICCs are sparsely populated and not robustly associated with future returns. Earnings-model-forecast-based ICCs are well-populated, but are unreliable outside the U.S. We adapt and extend the log-linear and present-value (LPV) framework—combining an accounting valuation anchor, its expected growth, and market prices—for estimating ERPs internationally, and implement a correction for the use of stale accounting data. An LPV ERP anchored on the book value of equity is positively associated with future returns in 26 of 29 equity markets, and largely subsumes the predictive ability of a broad set of firm characteristics previously shown to be associated with expected returns.