The Relationship between Asset Impairments and Value Relevance, Earnings Management, and Future Performance
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Hsu, Hsin-Man
Abstract
This study focuses on three topics. First, I examine the value relevance of the impairment loss to address whether the adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No.35 “Accounting for asset impairment” in Taiwan provides useful information to investors. I also partition assets regulated by SFAS No.35 into different classes to test the value relevance of the regulated assets. I find that total impairment loss is significantly negatively related to stock price, but all kinds of accumulated impairment balance are insignificantly associated with stock price. The results indicate that investors take the impairment loss information into consideration, but they probably cannot differentiate the valuation amounts of accumulated impairment across types of assets.ost of researches focus on examiming the impact of the managerial motives on the impairment recognitions, or testing the relation between earnings management and the value relevance of financial statements. The purpose of my second research topic is to test the existence of earnings management and to test the reversals of discretionary accruals to see whether the write-down group has more earnings management behavior relative to non write-down group. The empirical result does not support that the write-down group will use more discretionary accruals other than impairment loss to manipulate earnings.inally, I investigate the impact of the impairment loss on future operating performance to see whether the impairment loss recognition reflect the changes in the corporate future operating conditions. The results show that impairment information is positively related to the changes in future earnings, and is negatively related to the changes in future operating cash flows. These inconsistent results indicate that compared with operating cash flows, future earnings, which is affected by the macro environment conditions and firm-specific factors and consists of many accounting estimates, may not be a good proxy to examine whether the impairment loss reflects future operating performance.
Subjects
Assets impairment
value relevance
earnings management
future operating performance
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