Companies’ earnings conference calls are perceived to be venues for sell‐side equity analysts to ask management questions. In this study, we examine another important conference call participant—the buy‐side analyst—that has been underexplored in the literature due to data limitations. Using a large sample of transcripts, we identify 3,834 buy‐side analysts from 701 institutional investment firms who participated (i.e., asked a question) in 13,332 conference calls to examine the determinants and implications of their participation. Buy‐side analysts are more likely to participate when sell‐side analyst coverage is low and dispersion in sell‐side earnings forecasts is high, consistent with buy‐side analysts participating when a company's information environment is poor. Institutional investors trade more of a company's stock in the quarters in which their buy‐side analysts participate in the call. Finally, we find evidence that buy‐side analyst participation is associated with company‐level absolute changes in future stock price, trading volume, institutional ownership, and short interest.

We examine the determinants and outcomes of Chief Executive Officers ( CEO s) accepting a $1 salary, a compensation practice that occurs relatively frequently in high‐profile firms and is debated by regulators, investors, and the media. Using a hand‐collected sample of 93 CEO s from 91 firms between 1993 and 2011, we examine the triggers preceding the $1 salary decision, the factors associated with the decision, subsequent stock returns, and the outcomes for the CEO s. Our evidence is consistent with two explanations for the phenomenon: (i) it is a gesture of sacrifice by CEO s of firms in crisis, and (ii) it is a signal of better future performance by CEO s of growing firms. Our analyses highlight the two different circumstances and shed light on an interesting debate that has thus far been supported only by anecdotal evidence.

Conference presentations differ from other voluntary disclosures in that the audience for the disclosure is co-located with managers in a well-defined physical and social setting, or “disclosure milieu.” The milieu affects the degree to which conference participants can update their prior beliefs about the firm with information signals obtained through interactions with management and other informed participants. While the average abnormal stock return and volume reactions to presentations are positive, there is a great deal of cross-sectional variation as indicated by negative median reactions. We find that conference characteristics that determine the nature of the audience and its interactions, such as sponsor, location, size, and industry-focus, are significantly associated with the market reaction, consistent with the disclosure milieu explaining the cross-sectional variation in the information content of the presentation. We also find that conference characteristics explain changes in subsequent analyst and institutional investor following, consistent with the disclosure milieu creating differences in access to management by potential new investors and analysts.

We posit that a change in analyst interest in a firm is an early indicator of the firm's future fundamentals, capital market activities, and stock returns. We measure increases in analyst interest by obser.ving analysts who do not cover a firm but participate in that firm's earnings conference call, and we measure decreases in analyst interest by observing analysts who cover a firm, yet are absent from that firm's call. We find that increases in analyst interest are positively associated with future changes in firm fundamentals and capital market activities, while decreases in analyst interest are negatively associated with capital market activities. We also find that increases (decreases) in analyst interest are positively (negatively) correlated with future stock returns over the next three months and that a hedge portfolio yields a significant abnormal return. Overall, our study shows that analyst interest is a novel and early indicator of future firm fundamentals and capital market consequences.

We investigate the generalizability of widely perceived notions that buy-side analysts try to influence or manipulate a firm’s stock price by praising or criticizing management during a public earnings conference call. Despite two institutional factors that make it difficult to detect empirically, we find some evidence of stock influence behavior by using a combination of data on conference call transcripts and trading by the institutions that employ the buy-side analysts. However, we also find evidence consistent with the null hypothesis that buy-side analysts are acquiring information rather than manipulating the stock price. Subsample analyses suggest that stock influence is more detectable among hedge funds, while information acquisition is the norm among traditional buy-and-hold institutions. The evidence we provide on each behavior should be of interest to firm managers who host conference calls, market participants who use conference calls to collect company information, as well as regulators who monitor for possible market manipulation.

We examine whether firms use social media to strategically disseminate financial information. Analyzing S&P 1500 firms' use of Twitter to disseminate quarterly earnings announcements, we find that firms are less likely to disseminate when the news is bad and when the magnitude of the bad news is worse, consistent with strategic behavior. Furthermore, firms tend to send fewer earnings announcement tweets and “rehash” tweets when the news is bad. Cross-sectional analyses suggest that incentives for strategic dissemination are higher for firms with a lower level of investor sophistication and firms with a larger social media audience. We also find that strategic dissemination behavior is detectable in high litigation risk firms, but not low litigation risk firms. Finally, we find that the tweeting of bad news and the subsequent retweeting of that news by a firm's followers are associated with more negative news articles written about the firm by the traditional media, highlighting a potential downside to Twitter dissemination.