Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book The Association between Stock Splits and Post-Earnings Announcement Drift written by Anthony J. Amoruso and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We analyze changes in post-earnings announcement drift around 1,781 two-for-one or greater stock splits reported by an equal number of CRSP firms during the 1972 through 1996 time period. We find that for the smallest firms in our sample, post-earnings announcement drift is eliminated in the quarters immediately following the split. The effect is transitory, however, with drift reasserting itself beginning with the third post-split quarterly earnings announcement. The abnormal returns for the largest firms in our sample exhibit insignificant drift in both pre- and post-split periods. These results suggest that stock splits provide information that causes investors - at least temporarily - to more fully incorporate serial correlation into their earnings expectations. The differential effect noted for small and large firms is likely attributable to the richer information environment faced by larger firms, in which the signal provided by a stock split does not constitute a significant incremental contribution. Our results are inconsistent with the transactions costs explanation of drift, which predicts an increase in drift following a split that is invariant to firm size.