Joint Analysis of Corporate Decisions on Timing and Medium of Earnings Announcements: Evidence from Korea

This study comprehensively investigates the management's strategic behaviors in determining the timing and the disclosure medium for earnings announcements, utilizing the empirical setting in Korea. This study finds that firms tend to release bad earnings news on a delayed basis, without voluntary disclosure of preliminary earnings, on Friday or weekdays just before a holiday and during after-market hours, respectively. More importantly, firms employ multiple earnings announcement strategies jointly in a way to increase the number of strategies to hide earnings news as the earnings performance deteriorates. Further, there is evidence that the earnings announcement strategies are generally effective in avoiding or attracting the market attention as anticipated. Overall, this study provides new evidence supporting the managerial opportunism in earnings announcements by demonstrating that firm managers deliberately organize multiple options for announcements to maximize the possibility of adjusting the market attention for their purposes.