The quality of sell-side analysts' earnings forecast: empirical evidence from the Brazilian market

Abstract

The current paper analyses the forecast error of the sell side analysts in the Brazilian context, defined as the difference between the consensus forecast and the actual earnings per share. Our hypotheses are that there are factors pertaining to characteristics of the company and its information environment that impact significatively both the size of the forecast error (accuracy) and the bias presented by the projections (bias). The hypotheses are confirmed. However, the results show several differences between the tests conducted in developed markets and the tests conducted in the Brazilian market. We believe that these results can be explained in three ways: either forecasts produced by Brazilian analysts add very little value over statistical models, probably because of lack of ability; or the macroeconomic instability in Brazil is so great that its influence on the companies' results dominates all other factors that could impact the size of the forecast error; or the earnings management of the companies in the developed markets is so widespread, leading to such a stability of earnings, that it allows for more subtle factors such as company size and leverage and earnings variability become significant.