Research On The Impact Of Analysts' Firm Site Visit On The Accuracy Of Earnings Forecast And Its Influencing Factors

Analysts are one of the participants in the capital market gradually appearing with the development of capital market.Their main work is to obtain the information of listed companies through public or private channels,use their professional skills,adopt reasonable valuation model,process the information of listed companies,form quantitative summary measures of future earnings of listed companies and release them into the market.As an information intermediary in the capital market,they can reduce the information asymmetry.But to achieve these functions,analysts must be able to obtain enough information.Existing research shows that analysts' access to information can be divided into two main categories: one is to obtain information through public channels,the other is to obtain information through private channels.There already were many literatures on analysts' access to public information,so this paper mainly studies analysts' access to private information.Among several private information acquisition channels for analysts,firm site visit has advantages because of its controllable time,so that analysts can actively choose the time for firm site visit and rich contents,in which analysts can talk with managers face-to-face,visit and understand the company's operations,workshops and business projects.Firm site visit become one of the important channels for analysts to obtain information.According to relevant research,firm site visit is one of the important ways for analysts to obtain information,which can help analysts obtain more information about listed companies,thus reducing the earnings forecast error.This paper uses all listed companies in Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2016 as research samples and gain information from 179793 A-share listed companies' analyst reports,annual reports and periodic disclosure documents.We get relevant data with analysts' firm site visit(frequency of visit)and earnings forecast,and study the influence of analysts' firm site visit to the information acquisition.The results show that firm site visit can help analysts obtain information,thus reducing earnings forecast errors.Furthermore,the enterprise information environment,analyst's local advantages and analyst relationship will affect the information acquisition in the process of firm site visit.The worse enterprise information environment,the existence of local advantages of analysts and good social relations between analysts and listed companies will help analysts to obtain information in the process of firm site visit.Based on firm site visit,this paper proves that firm site visit can help analysts to obtain information of listed companies,thus reducing their earnings forecast errors and improving the information content of earnings forecast,so that analysts can better play the role of "information media" and "information providers" in the capital market.Firm site visit is one of the important ways for analysts to obtain information.Further,this paper proves that enterprise information environment,analyst's local advantages and analyst's relationship will affect the information acquisition in the process of firm site visit,which will promote the listed companies to improve their own information environment and treat the analysts more equitable.Finally,there are some studies on the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecast and firm site visit,but the conclusions are different.Based on a large number of datas,this paper proves the positive relationship between firm site visit and analysts' earnings prediction accuracy,which provides data support for firm site visit.