Previsão de analistas e as estratégias de gerenciamento de resultados utilizadas para evitar surpresa nos lucros

Abstract

This study aimed to identify whether Brazilian companies listed on the BM&FBovespa in the period from 2010 to 2015 that achieved the results targets established in the financial analysts’ forecasts managed their results through real activities and/or discretionary accruals. For that, the levels of results management were estimated through discretionary operational and accrual decisions; While the surprise in the analysts’ prediction was identified by the forecast error. In order to reach the objective of this research, we used the ordinary least squares (OLS) method with dummies for the year and sector. The results showed, first of all, that more than 50% of the companies listed on the BM&FBovespa, from 2010 to 2015, generally adopted practices of results management through real activity to increase the accounting result of the current period. Regarding the management of results through discretionary accruals, the results pointed out that managers have incentives to manage their results to achieve the profit predicted by financial analysts. With regard to the use of results management strategies, in order to avoid surprising profits in relation to the prediction of financial analysts’ profits, the results pointed to a negative relationship between discretionary accruals and forecast error, suggesting that the greater the Level of the accruals of the sample companies, the smaller the error of the forecast, that is, that the managers possibly manage the results by accounting choices opportunistically, in order to reach the forecast of the profits of the analysts. However, the same has not been observed in relation to the management of results through real activities. Thus, no evidence has been found that managers jointly manage results management through real activities an