Marketing and Financial Analysts

On Tuesday April 26, from 12:15 – 13:30 O’clock, Paul Hilfrich will present his joint project with Simone Wies in our Seminar Series. Title and abstract of the talk can be found below.

The Seminar will be held in Seminar Room RuW 1.201 as well as broadcasted via Zoom with the following linkhttps://uni-frankfurt.zoom.us/j/97914923495?pwd=dXJWd0ZTNjVDYitJV1FNWWxaamc0QT09

Meeting-ID: 979 1492 3495
Passcode: 234038

Title: Marketing and Financial Analysts

Authors: Paul Hilfrich, Simone Wies

Abstract:

Financial analysts are essential information intermediaries between firms and the investor community. Yet, research about the extent to which financial analysts request marketing information for their valuation and forecasting processes is sparse. This study analyzes differences in forecast accuracy based on the emphasis analysts assign to marketing. The relevance of marketing to an analyst is proxied as the share of sentences spoken that contain a marketing term using more than 200,000 earnings call transcripts and a self-developed dictionary. The relative forecast accuracy of analysts that emphasize marketing, labeled ‘marketing analysts’, is examined using more than 1,500,000 earnings forecasts. We show that these analysts exhibit significantly higher accuracy in a fixed effects model. This effect is found to have positive interactions with a firm’s marketing focus factors, such as advertising reporting and the market-to-book ratio. We also study the characteristics associated with marketing analysts and find that marketing analysts are on average less experienced, work for larger brokerage firms, and make more forecasts. A key implication of this study is that marketing information is highly relevant in determining the true value of a firm.