Gregory S. Miller

Assessing methods of identifying management forecasts: CIG vs. researcher collected

This paper examines the characteristics of management forecasts available on Thomson First Call’s Company Issued Guidance (CIG) database relative to a sample of forecasts hand-collected through a search of company press releases. Due to the significantly lower cost of using CIG (relative to hand-collecting data), academics have increasingly relied on this database as a source of management forecasts. However, it is important for researchers to consider the properties of this database (such as coverage, accuracy, and breadth) when evaluating whether it is an appropriate data source for their study. Overall, our results suggest systematic differences between forecasts reported on CIG and forecasts gathered from company press releases. We suggest several sample criteria that will remove or mitigate these biases.

The Evolving Disclosure Landscape: How Changes in Technology, the Media, and Capital Markets Are Affecting Disclosure

Recent changes in technology and the media are causing significant changes in how capital markets assimilate and respond to information. We identify important themes in the disclosure literature and use this as a framework to discuss the conference papers that appear in this volume. These papers examine how managers’ disclosure practices are being affected by changes in technology, the media, and capital markets. While this work makes important progress, we discuss how continuing technological change and the emergence of new forms of media offer further opportunities for research on the role of disclosure in capital markets.

Perceptions and Price: Evidence from CEO Presentations at IPO Roadshows

This paper examines the relation between cognitive perceptions of management and firm valuation. We develop a composite measure of investor perception using 30-second content-filtered video clips of initial public offering (IPO) roadshow presentations. We show that this measure, designed to capture viewers’ overall perceptions of a CEO, is positively associated with pricing at all stages of the IPO (proposed price, offer price and end of first day of trading). The result is robust to controls for traditional determinants of firm value. We also show that firms with highly perceived management are more likely to be matched to high-quality underwriters. In further exploratory analyses, we find the impact is greater for firms with more uncertain language in their written S-1. Taken together, our results provide evidence that investors’ instinctive perceptions of management are incorporated into their assessments of firm value.

Market Valuation of Anticipated Governance Changes: Evidence from Contentious Shareholder Meetings

We define annual shareholder meetings as contentious if one or more ballot items are likely to obtain sufficient shareholder votes to induce a firm to implement governance changes. Using a sample of almost 28,000 meetings between 2003 and 2012, we find that abnormal stock returns over the 40-day period prior to contentious meetings are significantly positive and higher than prior to non-contentious meetings. These higher abnormal returns persist after controlling for firm-specific news and proxies for risk factors and are more pronounced in firms with poor past performance. Our results are consistent with investors viewing an increase in the probability of shareholder vote-induced governance changes as value creating, on average.