Value Relevance of Non-Accounting Financial Information

Investors and analysts have called for more timely disclosure of corporate information. Responding to these<br>demands, some retail firms issue comparable store sales (CSS) on a monthly or a quarterly basis in addition to an<br>annual basis. This study examines whether a timely disclosure of CSS provides value-relevant information to<br>market participants by examining investors' and financial analysts' responses at the time of CSS disclosures<br>(short-horizon) and over the month or the quarter (long-horizon). We find that both monthly and quarterly CSS<br>are associated with contemporaneous market returns and analyst forecast revisions. More importantly, we find<br>that quarterly CSS news becomes less important to investors when firms provide more timely CSS information,<br>indicating that monthly CSS reports may preempt the information content of quarterly CSS. Additional tests<br>show that investors and analysts rely less on CSS if CSS news and earnings (sales) news are inconsistent.