Analysts' Site Visits,Accounting Quality And Earnings Forecasts

Security analysts are professionals who forecast the stock market and value changes,providing investors with analysis reports,prediction and advice in written or oral way.In addition to accumulating the necessary professional knowledge,the collection of information is also very important for the security analysts.The security analysts' sources of information mainly can be divided into two types.One is the public information such as the financial reports of the quoted companies.The other is the non-public information.Site visits are one of the representatives.Analysts' site visits refer to a series of research,such as visiting company product line,interviewing executives face-to-face before making related earnings forecasts.Research results show that site visits lay a good foundation for security analysts to better understand the status and the competitive situation of the company to forecast the company's future profitability and provide investment advice.In this paper,based on the data of site visits in 2012-2014,the research found that earnings forecasts made by analysts are more accurate after the site visits.In the further research,we find that the lower the quality of accounting information of the listed corporation,analysts' site visits play a more important role on improving the accuracy of the forecasts.The empirical results show that analysts can obtain valuable information of listed company to guide the prediction through site visits.Comparing analysts' passive recipients of information disclosure,site visits are an important way of analysts' information collection.Analysts have certain initiative and independent selective attention to the information when they site visit.It should be further confirmation of the public information.The research starts from the analysts' information sources.It provides strong empirical evidence of how to further improve the role of information media for our analysts.And it also provides analysts with enlightenment value to further perfect listed company's information disclosure in our country and promotes the development of analyst industry.Due to the few domestic research on analyst site visits nowadays,this study is an effective complement of the research of the factors that affect the accuracy of analysts' earnings at home and abroad.