The incremental informativeness of sell-side earnings forecasts. Evidence for the Warsaw Stock Exchange

We investigate whether earnings forecasts issued by sell-side analysts are incrementally informative about the returns of firms listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE), a moderately-developed, postcommunist capital market. Our sample covers the fiscal years 2008-2016. The informativeness of earn- ings (and earnings forecasts) is defined as the association between earnings (earnings forecasts) and returns. Our findings indicate that the mean earnings forecasts issued by sell-side analysts are incremen- tally informative about firm returns beyond the earnings reported. This result does not depend on firm size, profitability, or market return. The findings indicate that such forecasts incorporate useful incremen- tal valuation information and that the incremental informativeness of these forecasts serves to protect the interests of analysts’ clients.