This study examines whether persistence of abnormal earnings affects book value of equity and earnings. According to Ohlson (Contemporary Accounting Res. (1995) 661–687) theoretical framework, a company's market value is a function of its book value of equity, earnings and other information. The persistence of abnormal earnings has a systematic relation with book value of equity and earnings. The persistence is measured using the first auto-correlation coefficient of abnormal earnings for two consecutive periods. This study intends to measure the persistence of abnormal earnings during 1993–2000 period for hotels and manufacturing companies. The results indicate that the persistence of abnormal earnings is higher for hotels than manufacturing companies and for hotels of first class than of other classes.
Policymakers are concerned with the economic aspects of tourism development, since a positive economic impact is necessary to generate income, job opportunities, business turnover, government taxes and foreign exchange earnings. This study empirically investigates whether hotels and manufacturing companies persistently obtain abnormal earnings. The accounting information provided to stakeholders in hotels to enable them to make accurate business decisions is important to ensure a continuous growth of hotels, especially as in Korea, the number of becoming bankrupt has increased in the prevailing economic climate.
The brand value of hotel companies is decided by the value of tangible and intangible assets. In Korea, almost all hotel companies, however, are not listed on securities market and their asset value is generally valued lower than companies so listed. This study intends to use the persistence of earnings as a proxy of asset value and evaluate the earnings of hotels and manufacturing companies to suggest an indirect means of representing profits.
This study deals with a value evaluation problem based on Ohlson's (1995) model that explains the persistence of abnormal earnings. The importance of accounting information has received after Ohlson (1995) systematically analyzed former studies regarding residual income and abnormal earnings. Specifically, Ohlson (1995) suggested that corporate profit can be represented as a linear function of corporate assets and profit based on the assumption of a clean surplus relation between assets dividends and time series relation of surplus profits.
The 67% of users of accounting information, including financial analysts, credit analysts, and accountants, insist that they importantly consider earnings quality in economic decisions and the 91% of them believe that earnings quality is very useful to economic decision making (Bricker, Flaherty, & O’Connor, 1995; Kim & Choi, 1999). Financial analysts suggest that the persistence of abnormal earnings is very important to corporate decision making. Further, the persistence of abnormal earnings is positively related to earnings quality (Siegel, 1982). In Korea, the persistence of abnormal earnings is not generally analyzed by the users of accounting information. The persistence of earnings is positively related to the explanatory power of accounting profit toward stock prices (Kormendi & Lipe, 1987; Lipe, 1990; Ali & Zarowin, 1992).
This paper, it is thought will be of interest to researchers and practitioners alike in that, in hotels, the persistence of abnormal earnings will be useful information to represent the earning quality and provide a reasonable basis for decision making in merge, acquisitions and value evaluation.
The data for hotels and manufacturing company were collected from 1993 and 2000 alike. The persistence parameter for hotels is 0.573 and the persistence parameter of hotels is higher than manufacturing companies. In the group of Middle class hotels, the coefficient of ω is 0.503, which is higher by 0.057 than that of Second Top class group and lower by 0.108 than that of First Top class group.
The quality of accounting information has received attention among practitioners and researchers alike as they provide an useful basis to compare earnings of different companies or earning of different periods in the same company. This study analyzed the difference in the continuity of earnings in hotels and manufacturing companies based on Ohlson's (1995) model of abnormal earnings.
Hotel companies do not fully utilize accounting information to assess the value of merger and acquisition, which is increasing to improve international competitiveness. The neglect of accounting information in merger and acquisition leads to inappropriate evaluation of its value in markets. This study uses the persistence of abnormal earnings, which is not familiar to practitioners, to evaluate the quality of earnings in hotel companies and improve understanding of the conditions that quality accounting information should have. The study improves the current understanding of the relation between earnings and book value and improves the usefulness of accounting information.
It is not practical to use the corporate bond interest rate of 3 yr period to produce abnormal earnings as risk-free interest rate. This is based on the assumption the interest rate is the same for 3 yr in the sample data, which will not reflect the real capital cost increasing the estimation error of persistence parameter of earnings
