Existing research indicates that firms with high accruals are more likely to
experience future earnings reversals and SEC enforcement actions for GAAP
violations, but that investors do not appear to anticipate these consequences. In
this paper, we directly examine the published opinions of two types of
professional investor intermediaries to see if they anticipate the consequences of
high accruals. First, we examine the earnings forecasts of sell-side analysts. We
show that analysts’ earnings forecasts do not anticipate the future earnings
reversals associated with high accruals. Second, we examine the audit opinions of
independent auditors. We find no evidence that auditors signal the higher
likelihood of GAAP violations through their audit opinions. Overall, our
evidence indicates that even professional investor intermediaries act as if they do
not anticipate the consequences of high accruals.