Information on Order Backlogs (OB) have long been sought after by analysts and practitioners as indicators of future sales, and in turn, of future earnings and stock returns. OB disclosures, though mandatory for annual reports, are voluntary for quarterly reports, and sometimes presented in...

Firm disclosure of order backlog (OB) is considered important to assess future sales and profits. The extant literature on OB has generally documented positive associations between increases in OB and market returns. These associations were based on annual disclosures of backlog in 10-K filings,...

This study explores whether the management discussion and analysis (MDamp;A) section of Forms 10-Q and 10-K has incremental information content beyond financial measures such as earnings surprises and accruals. It uses a classification scheme of words into positive and negative categories to...