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The main objective of this paper is to compare the ability of US-generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) operating cash flows versus Iran-GAAP operating cash flows in predicting future cash flows.

The sample comprises 240 firms (1,200 firm-years) during the period from 2004 to 2008 for which operating cash flows and other variables are available. Cross-sectional and panel data regression models are used in testing the hypotheses.

This study finds that operating cash flows based on Iran-GAAP are no more effective in predicting future cash flows than those based on USA-GAAP, and the predictive ability of the model is improved by adding the earnings accrual components to the operating cash flows.

The study suggests that the Iranian accounting standard setting committee recommends that the statement of cash flows be prepared based on the three-category model instead of the five-category model in an attempt to converge with the International Financial Reporting Standards. Consistent with Financial Accounting Standards Board and financial analyst recommendations, the results reveal that earnings are a better predictor than cash flows from operations.

The purpose of this paper is to identify whether negative operating cash flows are related to investment inefficiency, and specifically whether they are related to subsequent overinvestment and if this relationship is driven by agency problems within the firm.

The study conducts fixed effect regressions, testing the relationship between negative operating cash flows and the firm’s subsequent investment inefficiency. The relationship is further examined for all firms based on size, corporate governance and cash holdings – all of which are related to agency problems.

The proportion of firms reporting negative operating cash flows has been increasing over time and is positively related to subsequent investment inefficiency. This increase is explained not only by the rise in investment of intangible assets. The positive relationship is not explained by the firm size or corporate governance, but is related to cash holdings. These results are consistent across four different measures of firm investment.

The percentage of publicly traded firms with negative operating cash flows has never been higher. This paper is one of the first to identify factors that may be contributing to this rise.

This study extends prior findings by identifying previously unexplored factors related to the rise in firms with negative operating cash flows. The rise in investment of intangible assets does not explain the increase alone. High cash holdings also influence the rise in negative operating cash flows.

This paper aims to examine the association between earnings management and the value relevance of earnings (the latter is operationalized by earnings response coefficient). Specifically, this study examines whether opportunistic earnings management has a negative impact on the value relevance of earnings for a sample of firms listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange.

Different from prior work and due to data limitations in the Egyptian market, this paper first examines for the existence of earnings management based on the whole operating performances of the firms by testing whether firms with low/poor operating performance are more likely to choose income-increasing actions (strategies) than firms with high operating performance. After confirming that low operating performance firms manage earnings upward, the authors then assess whether this opportunistic earnings management by these low operating performance firms reduces the value relevance of earnings. This is performed by estimating a model of the relationship between stock returns and accounting earnings with a dummy variable that allows parameter shifts for earnings of low operating performance firms.

The results show that discretionary accruals are positive and significantly higher for firms with low operating performance than those for firms with high operating performance. These results indicate that low operating performance firms increase the earnings management practices by probably increasing their reported earnings opportunistically to mask their low performance. Furthermore, the results show that the earnings response coefficient is significantly smaller for earnings of low operating performance firms than that for earnings of high operating performance firms. These results suggest that earnings of firms with low operating performance (that are engaged in opportunistic earnings management strategies) have less value relevance than earnings of firms with high operating performance, i.e. the informativeness of managed earnings is lower than that of non-managed earnings.

Based on these results, it is plausible that the presence of opportunistic earnings management adversely affects the value relevance of accounting earnings.

Consistent with previous results from developed countries, this study shows that earnings management is a significant factor that affects value relevance of earnings in Egypt.

Firms are concerned about earnings per share (EPS) dilution after equity issues. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether firms manage upward their discretionary accruals around seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) to mitigate the impact of dilution on reported earnings.

The authors employ adjusted discretionary accruals from cash flow statements, normalized by the average common equity, in the multivariate tests.

There is evidence that SEO‐year discretionary accruals are the highest when contemporaneous operating cash flows are the lowest. Moreover, managers react to temporary rather than permanent declines in operating performance. Firms with the highest SEO‐year discretionary accruals experience the strongest improvements in post‐SEO operating cash flows. In addition, investors are not misled by the SEO‐year earnings management. There is no relation between the SEO‐year discretionary accruals and post‐SEO stock performance. Overall, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that firms manage discretionary accruals around SEOs to mitigate the effect of temporary EPS dilution.

The paper's findings suggest that firms manage discretionary accruals during the SEO year to reduce the temporary negative impact of SEOs on operating performance measures, consistent with the EPS dilution hypothesis. Such earnings management makes earnings smoother and more predictable, improving earnings informativeness. The findings also suggest that misleading earnings management is not a common practice during the SEO year.

This paper adds to the literature questioning the evidence that managers frequently engage in misleading earnings management around corporate events. The authors provide an alternative explanation for earnings management around SEOs.

In response to recent concerns on earnings quality and a firm's fundamental performance, the purpose of this paper is to re‐examine salient questions under accrual accounting: how earnings quality affects the role of earnings and operating cash flows in a firm's valuation.

Using a large sample ranging from 1989 to 2008, the authors contrast the effects of three representative accrual‐based earnings quality measures on the association between earnings, operating cash flows and a firm's abnormal stock returns.

In the univariate analysis it was found that earnings explain returns similarly to operating cash flows. With control of earnings quality, the results indicate that earnings' role in explaining contemporaneous abnormal returns remains unchanged when earnings quality is better. Conversely, operating cash flows explain more contemporaneous abnormal returns when earnings quality is better. The findings could suggest that the market reacts to operating cash flows conditionally on earnings quality. Intriguingly, the results also indicate that the market perceives better earnings quality captures superior performance of operating cash flows rather than that of earnings. These findings are further fortified by additional analyses revealing that the earnings quality measure with control of operating cash flows affects the supplemental role of operating cash flows most.

The paper's findings provide insights on how the market processes firm value signals embedded in earnings quality, which have direct implications for regulators, standard setters, academics and practitioners.

The purpose of this study is to develop an index for financial constraints, specifically for restaurant firms, and to further validate the developed financial constraint index.

This study used logistic regression with a composite criterion based on the dividend payout ratio, KZ index and Cleary index to estimate restaurant firms’ financial constraints. Then, a fixed-effects regression was used to verify the validity of the measurement of restaurant firms’ financial constraints.

A restaurant firm’s operating profit, financial leverage, asset tangibility, sale of fixed assets and percentage change in number of employees are critical indicators for identifying financial constraints. The results indicated that in cases with positive operating cash flows, the effect of operating cash flow on capital investments continuously decreased as restaurant firms’ financial constraints increased.

This study is unique in that the specific financial and operational characteristics of restaurant firms were included in the model to determine financial constraint indicators, such as sale of fixed assets and percentage change in number of employees.

The operating activities section of the statement of cash flows presents a long-standing teaching challenge for accounting educators. The direct method is easy to understand yet difficult to prepare; the indirect method is harder to understand but easier to prepare. Many instructors address the two methods separately, requiring students to learn two different ways for preparing the operating section of a statement of cash flows. Because of this focus on the mechanics of preparation, the result is often an emphasis on how to prepare the cash flow statement rather than on the essential information the statement provides. In this paper, the authors note that both direct and indirect methods begin at the same point, that is, the income statement, and end at the same point, that is, cash flow from operations. Then, the authors describe one process by which the income statement and the balance sheet can be analyzed to provide the information required to present operating cash flow using either the direct or the indirect method. Using this approach allows students to apply one intuitive process for computing cash flow from operations rather than memorizing two different sets of rules for direct and indirect methods.

The authors aim at investigating different forms of classification shifting (CS). CS is a novel form of earnings management under which managers misclassify income statement line items and cash flow statement line items with an intent to report favorable operating performance of firms. In particular, the authors check the existence of revenue misclassification, expense misclassification and cash flows misclassification among Indian firms by taking the uniform sample of firms over a single period.

Operating revenue model (Malikov et al., 2018), core earnings expectation model (McVay, 2006) and operating cash flows model (Roychowdhury, 2006) are employed for measuring revenue misclassification, expense misclassification and cash flows misclassification, respectively. The panel data regression models are used to analyze the data for this study.

Based on the sample of 12,870 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed firm-years observations between 2010 and 2018, we find that, on average, Indian firms are engaged in revenue misclassification rather than expense misclassification to report inflated core earnings. Firms are found to be engaged in cash flows misclassification too. Besides, we find that magnitude of shifting is greater among larger firms. Results also establish that adoption of Ind AS increases the scope of shifting practices. These results are based on several robustness checks.

The results suggest that investors conduct a comprehensive review of the items of financial statements before using them in their portfolio valuation. It suggests auditors check the basis of revenue classification and standard-setting authorities, like ICAI in India, to make more mandatory disclosure requirements for classification of revenues and cash flows. It suggests lenders not to make lending decisions by looking at the operating performance metrics, as CS is the most preferred tool to positively influence the perception of lenders toward operating performance.

It is the first study that investigates different forms of classification shifting jointly for a sample of firms. Most of the earlier studies have examined one kind of classification shifting at a time. This study adds to the existing literature on earnings management by documenting that some firm-specific factors pressurize firms to prefer one form of shifting over another to report inflated core earnings.

Highlights the operating cycle, its importance, and reviews basic relationships related to the cycle. In particular, it focuses on capital “flow through”, invested capital, capital at risk, and economic returns generated relative to capital employed. Reveals an amplification effect that results from improvements in the management of the cycle, that benefit traceable to a reduction in operating risk allowing incremental benefits from financial leverage. Suggests specific actions to take with respect to the cycle that will improve the value of your firm. Shows that small improvements in operating factors within the cycle yield amplified benefits to the firm. The discussion ignores taxes except in instances when tax effects are important. This does not detract from the discourse or conclusions. Reveals that increases in firm value that result from improved management of the operating cycle stem from several sources: greater levels of economic returns from operations; a reduction in operating risk; less capital invested and at lower risk; lower cost of capital; and increased tax benefit.

This study aims to provide insights into US and Australian analysts' views regarding the relative importance of disclosing the direct method (DM) or indirect method (IM) statement of cash flows and forecasting firm performance.

Evidence is collected from responses to 104 surveys and 52 interviews completed by US and Australian analysts from 2017 to 2022. The survey and interview questions are developed with reference to the literature.

US and Australian analysts believe that the DM format provides incremental benefits compared to the IM for (1) confirming the reliability of earnings; (2) improving earnings confidence; (3) more accurate ex ante forecasts of operating cash flow and earnings; and (4) identifying opportunistic accruals manipulation. Analysts view that DM disclosure can lower firm-level cost of equity, although US interviewees more uniformly expect lower costs of equity under DM disclosure when firms yield low earnings quality. DM disclosure is also more important during unstable economic periods, as proxied by COVID-19.

Limited research currently exists regarding disclosure of the DM or IM and its impact on analysts' forecasting accuracy, earnings quality, economic uncertainty and cost of equity. Previous research has relied on archival research to examine differences between the DM and IM methods and are limited by data availability. Our findings are particularly relevant to the US market with few US firms reporting the DM format.