Auditor Conservatism and Analysts' Fourth Quarter Earnings Forecasts

We argue that accounting conservatism makes earnings forecasting difficult by introducing transitory components in reported earnings. These transitory components are likely to be disproportionately represented in firms reporting losses. We show that analysts' mean forecast errors and absolute forecast errors for loss firms are substantially greater than those for profit firms in every single quarter, regardless of the forecast horizon. We argue that auditors' legal liability incentives make it likely that fourth quarter earnings are more conservative than interim quarter earnings. Forecast errors are always higher for loss firms in the fourth quarter compared to earlier quarters. Using special items to proxy for transitory components induced by conservatism, we document similar results for firms reporting special items, partitioned by the sign of the special items. Our results are consistent with auditor conservatism affecting fourth quarter earnings differentially, which causes analysts' earnings forecasts to be poorest for the fourth quarter