This study evaluates two explanations for the low contemporaneous returnearnings
association: (i) lack of timeliness of earnings in capturing valuerelevant
events and market expectations embedded in price and (ii) the presence
of value- irrelevant noise in earnings. A statistical consequence of earnings’ lack
of timeliness is that stock returns of one time period should be related to
earnings growth rates of contemporaneous and future time periods. Unlike
earnings’ lack of timeliness, value-irrelevant noise, as modelled in the literature,
is uncorrelated with stock returns in the current, past, and future periods. This is
true in spite of the fact that value-irrelevant noise in one time period may reverse
itself over time and thus exhibit negative serial correlation.
In an efficient market, current stock returns reflect the surprise component of
the current periods’ earnings and news that causes the market to revise its
expectations about future periods’ earnings. Earnings’ lack of timeliness vis-avis
the market implies that some of the information in current earnings is
already impounded in past prices and, therefore, is unrelated to current returns.
This weakens the contemporaneous association between stock returns and
earnings. To control for this anticipated component of current earnings, we
include lagged earnings yield as a proxy for expected current earnings growth.
The news arriving in the current period that causes the market to revise its
expectations about future earnings is not reflected in current earnings because of
lack of timeliness. Once again, the contemporaneous return-earnings association
is weakened. To approximate the revisions in the market’s expectations
taking place over a given year, we simultaneously include the realized future
earnings growth rates and future returns in the returnearnings model. In effect,
the role of future returns is to control for the surprise components embedded in
the future periods’ earnings growth rates, which are irrelevant in explaining the
current periods returns.