The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes in the value relevance of accounting information provided by the consolidated as well as the separate financial statements under the K-IFRS regime. The sample consists of 546 firms which prepared con...
The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes in the value relevance of accounting information provided by the consolidated as well as the separate financial statements under the K-IFRS regime. The sample consists of 546 firms which prepared consolidated financial statements on a consecutive basis during the three year period from 2009 to 2011, or 1,638 firm-years over the sample period. The value relevance of accounting information is primarily measured by the price multiples of EPS and BVPS as well as the adjusted R2's obtained by estimating Ohlson (1996) type models over the periods both before and after the adoption of K-IFRS for comparison purposes. In supplementary analyses, annual return was regressed on the EPS changes with a view to examine the earnings response coefficient changes and the coefficients of determination for the two periods under consideration. Similar approaches are employed to compare the value relevance of accounting information between consolidated versus separate financial statements. These research schemes aim to investigate whether the usefulness of consolidated financial statements information improved in accordance with the designation of consolidated financial statements as the primary media for disseminating corporate financial information under the K-IFRS regime.
Main results of the analyses are summarized as follows. First, in comparisons between pre- and post-K-IFRS adoptions, the value relevance of BVPS increased after the adoption, whereas EPS exhibited a contrary trend, inconsistent with expectation. As a possible explanation, we consider the changes in the depreciation policies implemented by a great majority of sample companies in line with the adoption of K-IFRS, whereby the dominant fixed percentage methods were substituted by straight-line methods, resulting in lower depreciation expenses and larger bottom-line earnings numbers. In a confirmatory analysis, the firms featured by larger amount of depreciable assets experienced greater decreases in the value relevance of EPS information in the post-IFRS period. As another possibility, we also considered the changes in the level of accounting conservatism with the advent of K-IFRS era. Again, consistent with predictions, the decrease in the value relevance of EPS was found to be led mainly by the firms featured by low level of accounting conservatism.
Second, in comparisons between consolidated versus separate financial statements, the value relevance of the latter statements exceeded those of consolidated statements during the pre-adoption period, which trend is reversed after the adoption of K-IFRS, corroborating the enhancement of the usefulness of consolidated statements information. The differences in the explanatory power of separate versus consolidated financial statements were confirmed by conducting Vuong tests. Also, in a series of additional tests, the afore-mentioned results remained qualitatively unchanged after controlling for heteroscedasticity, with the separation of conversion effects included in the valuation models, and the break down of the entire sample into KOSPI and KOSDAQ market-based sub-samples. In particular, the KOSPI sub-sample provided the same results as the aggregate analyses, whereas the results obtained from KOSDAQ market were largely insignificant, indicating the results observed above were led by the KOSPI market.
This paper contributes to the extant literature in the following manners. Firstly, the study investigates the changes in the value relevance of consolidated financial statement information and further delves into the potential causes underlying the patterns of changes stemming from EPS versus BVPS. We argue that accounting policy changes with regard to depreciation and the conservatism changes associated with the adoption of K-IFRS played a significant role in this respect, which, to our understanding, marks the first attempt in Korean context.
Secondly, the measurement of value relevance change was tackled in a variety of approaches. The changes in the value relevance of accounting information are measured by the differences in the price-multiples corresponding to the respective valuation factors of EPS and BVPS. In addition, the changes in the explanatory powers of alternative valuation models are also compared between before and after the adoption of K-IFRS, and between the separate versus consolidated financial statements. However, this research has an inherent limitation in that it covered only one year data capturing the effects of the full implementation of K-IFRS. Subsequent to the introduction of K-IFRS, several technical issues surfaced in the practical arena. For instance, a number of firms listed in the KOSDAQ market exercised their discretions to reclassify non-business income to inflate operating income numbers mainly to avoid unfavorable economic consequences. Confusion was also voiced in a move away from equity method to cost or fair value method as applied to investments in related companies in the separate financial statements. Regulatory agency responded to these controversies by requiring the listed companies to disclose operating income in the traditional manner from 2012, whereby operating income is computed by subtracting selling and administrative expenses from sales revenue, which used to be practiced as a norm before the K-IFRS adoption. These initial confusions at the introductory phase of K-IFRS may have impacted results of this research so that the generalization of the research findings demands caution. A further elaboration of the research on the basis of augmented data covering extended research period appears warranted in the foreseeable future.