Management Earnings Forecasts and the Cost of Debt

Prior studies have indicated that earnings are useful for bond market investors and that beating earnings benchmarks is related to a firm’s lower cost of debt. This study examines whether management earnings forecasts are related to a firm’s cost of debt. Our results indicate that (a) positive forecast innovations (i.e., forecasted increases in earnings) are related to a firm’s lower bond yield spread after controlling for the effect of other earnings benchmarks and (b) the negative association between positive forecast innovations and bond yield spread is weaker for firms with high default risk than for those with low default risk. The results suggest that management earnings forecasts are useful for investors in the Japanese bond market and are consistent with the findings in the equity market. However, the usefulness of management earnings forecasts in the bond market depends on a firm’s level of default risk. Our results suggest that bond investors discount the management earnings forecasts of firms with high default risk because such forecasts are more likely to have an optimistic bias.