Seminar (Dept. of Accounting)

Title：Earning Call Slide Deck

Speaker: Da Xu, Assistant Professor, Tsinghua University

Time：10:00-11:30, December 25th, 2024 (Wednesday)

Venue：Room 706, Mingde Business Building

Language：Chinese & English

ABSTRACT:

In recent years, earnings call slide decks (hereafter, earnings decks) have become increasingly prevalent in the earnings announcements of public firms. In this paper, I examine the characteristics of earnings decks and the determinants of firms’ use of them. More importantly, I study their capital market roles. While I fail to find supporting evidence that earnings decks on average offer incremental information beyond traditional disclosures, such as press releases and earnings call pre-remarks, they significantly reduce users’ information processing time. My analyses reveal three mechanisms that contribute to this acceleration: inclusion of visuals (e.g., charts and tables), summarization of key information, and early release prior to live earnings calls. Overall, this study documents a novel aspect of earnings announcements and highlights the role of multimedia elements in reducing information processing costs of corporate disclosures.