(β1 = 0.670 and β2 = 0.704). As expected, the empirical evidence suggests that the higher earnings persistence of the cash flow component of earnings relative to the accrual component of earnings, consistent with Sloan (1996). Our evidence that the cash flow component of earnings of Thai firms is more persistent than the accrual component of earnings is consistent with that the quality of the cash flow component is higher than the quality of the accrual component of earnings
3.The Pricing of Earnings and their Cash Flow and Accrual Components
An estimation of the non-linear valuation model provides empirical evidence on the market
pricing of reported earnings. Panel A of Table 3 presents results for a full sample of 2,325 firm year observations. Sloan (1996) finds that U.S.stock markets accurately price the persistence of reported earnings since the valuation parameter of reported earnings is not significantly different from the forecasting parameter of reported earnings.Our results reported in Panel A of Table 3 show that the valuation parameter of reported earnings (EARNt) are significantly lower that its forecasting parameter, suggesting that Thai stock markets underprice the persistence of reported earnings.
Possible explanations are that Thai stock markets are emerging markets with much smaller market
capitalization and trading volume, relative to developed capital markets such as U.S. stock
markets and that Thai stock markets are not efficient [Islam et al. (2007) and Tantipanichkul
and Supattarakul (2011)].Ball and Shivakumar (2006) and Anderson et al. (2009) suggest that the valuation parameters are affected from signs of firm operating performance.Thus, we estimate the valuation model for a profit firm subsample. Results are reported in Panel B of Table 3. Our empirical evidence suggests that stock prices of Thai firms do not accurately reflect the
persistence of reported earnings with respect to one-year-ahead earnings. Specifically, the valuation parameter of EARNt (α*1 = 0.357) is smaller than its forecasting parameter (α1 = 0.545); however, the result is not significant at a conventional level. Results on an estimation of the valuation model with the cash flow and accrual components of earnings for our full sample of 2,325 firm-year observations are reported on Panel A of Table 4. Our results show that the valuation parameters of ACCt and CFOt are significantly smaller than their forecasting parameters. Our results suggest that Thai stock markets underprice both cash flow and
accrual components of earnings and that Thai stock markets perceive the accrual component to be
more persistence than the cash flow component.We also estimate the valuation model for a profit-firm subsample of 1,625 firm-year observations. The results are reported in Panel B of Table 4. The valuation parameter of ACCt and its forecasting parameter are not significantly different
(β*1 = 0.666 and β1 = 0.670). However, the valuation parameter of CFOt (β*2 = 0.078) is significantly smaller than its forecasting parameter (β2 = 0.704).The evidence suggests that stock prices of Thai firms accurately reflect the persistence of the accrual component while inaccurately the higher persistence of the cash flow component. It also suggests that Thai stock markets perceive that the accrual component is more persistent than the cash flow component.
Our empirical results of Thai firms are inconsistent with empirical results of U.S. firms
documented in Sloan (1996). Possible explanations are that Thai stock markets are emerging markets with much smaller market capitalization and trading volume, relative to developed capital markets such as U.S. stock markets and that Thai stock markets are not efficient [Islam et al. (2007) and Tantipanichkul and Supattarakul (2011)].