Strategic Earnings Announcements on Stockholm OMX Exchange - A study of the tendency to and market reaction towards disclosure of earnings announcements during periods of lower market attention(?)

Sammanfattning: In this study, we investigate the phenomenon of Strategic Earnings Announcements on the Stockholm OMX Exchange. Using basic t-tests, we report that earnings announcements made on Fridays are not related to negative earnings surprises when compared to other weekdays, rather there are indications that Friday announcements are related to a positive surprise in the market. However, we show that the analysts and markets expectations for Friday announcements is indeed lower than expectations for earnings announcements on other days, even when comparing with paired samples of companies, but the actual reported earnings are not lower for Friday announcements. Together, these facts are the cause of the more positive surprise of Friday earnings announcements. Conducting an event study, we further discover that Friday announcements do not suffer from reduced market attention, as the abnormal and cumulative abnormal return, for different levels of earnings surprise, does not significantly differ for announcements on Fridays and other days. Our findings are in contrast to previous studies performed on U.S data, but we are unable to explain why with any certainty.