Leveraging big data to study information dissemination of material firm events

Could real-time big data help unravel material firm events? How would it compare with firm disclosure and traditional media in terms of timeliness and completeness? Could big data provide incremental value-relevant information for investors? With these questions in mind, we use a novel data set of cell phone “pings” (i.e., geolocation signals from mobile devices) to track production disruptions (outages)––material events for U.S. oil refineries. We first validate the construct by examining the effects of outages on local gas prices and firms’ accounting performance. Our main analyses show that (i) refining firms do not voluntarily disclose refinery outages identified by cell phone pings; (ii) traditional media cover only a small portion of ping-based outages; (iii) the stock market finds ping-based outages to be value relevant but incorporates the information with delay. Further analysis suggests that given the incomplete media coverage and lack of firm disclosure, investors appear to learn the financial impact of such outages through subsequent earnings announcements. Our evidence has implications for regulators such as the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission as they continue to evaluate both the compliance and usefulness of disclosures for material firm events such as production disruptions