The impact of IFRS goodwill reporting on financial analysts' equity valuation judgements: some experimental evidence

This article uses an experiment to investigate how professional financial analysts evaluate a corporate acquisition announced by an IFRS preparer. The findings suggest that professional analysts are affected by preparers' acquisition premium allocations in a potentially misleading way as the participants considered the acquisition to be value-enhancing when the premium was allocated to goodwill, but value-reducing when allocated to identifiable intangible assets. These effects were mitigated at the aggregate level when additional discounted cash flow analysis information was provided; however, there were significant differences in information search behaviour as quite many participants focused primarily on the exploitation of earnings information.