Ball and Shivakumar (2006) and Anderson et al.(2009) suggest that the valuation parameters are
affected from signs of firm operating performance.Therefore, we also estimate the valuation model for a profit-firm subsample.The results show that the valuation and forecasting parameters
of the accrual component are not significantly different while the valuation parameter of the cash flow component is significantly smaller than its forecasting parameter, suggesting that stock prices accurately reflect the persistence of the accrual component but inaccurately the higher persistence of the cash flow component. The results also suggest that Thai stock markets perceive that the cash flow component is less persistent than the accrual 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)].Our study contributes to the accounting literature by providing empirical evidence on the earnings persistence of reported earnings and their
cash flow and accrual components of emerging markets (i.e., Thai stock markets).Although
Thai listed firms during our sample period have not fully implemented International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) in preparing their financial statements, reported earnings of Thai
firms are persistent with a persistence coefficient of less than 1.0 implying a mean-reverting
accounting rate of return. Moreover, our results on the earnings persistence of the cash flow and accrual components of earnings suggest the higher persistence of the cash flow component, relative to the accrual component, consistent with prior studies for developed capital markets (i.e., U.S.stock markets). The results are beneficial to financial analysts and investors of Thai listed firms in that when they are predicting a firm’s future earnings in an estimation of the fi rm’s stock price, they should take into account the differential persistence of the cash flow and accrual components of current earnings. In addition, our results that stock prices
do not accurately reflect information in the cash flow and accrual components of earnings with
respect to one-year-ahead earnings suggest that Thai investors can possibly earn abnormal returns from the mispricing of these earnings components. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses prior research on the earnings persistence and the marketing pricing of reported earnings and their cash flow and accrual component. Section 3 describes the sample selection criteria, variable measurements, and model specifications. Empirical tests and results are discussed in Section 4. The final section concludes the paper.