Expectations Guidance in Public Companies

Media coverage highlighting companies’ inability to meet analysts’ expectations - often disregarding respectable growth by the same companies - is nowadays a very common occurrence. In the face of increasing attention to analysts’ expectations an increasing focus on so-called "earnings guidance” has arisen. The present work focuses on the issue of how listed companies deal with analysts’ expectations. Marisa Nöldeke presents a comprehensive review of academic disclosure and transparency literature in conjunction with the results of an anonymous questionnaire of transparency and earnings surprises in Germany and Switzerland. Further, through the investigation of short-term management forecasting behaviour as an instrument of earnings guidance, she draws the conclusion that managers have indeed come under increasing pressure to provide their own short-term forecasts. This is done in order to actively "walk down” analysts’ forecasts.