Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Annual report readability'

Drawing on agency theory and obfuscation hypothesis, the main focus of this thesis is on the readability of annual reports. It comprises three empirical chapters which examine the readability of annual report and the possible association with the audit function. The effect of auditing on the lexical content of annual report, is to be studied in three different, yet interrelated, auditing topics, namely, audit fees, audit firm tenure, and auditor switching. The results in the first empirical chapter which investigates the association between annual reports readability and audit fees suggests that audit fees is highly statistically associated with the readability of the annual report and this association holds after controlling for different firm specific and financial characteristics. This suggests that high levels of audit fees, measured as fees paid for statutory audit services, may partially explain the quality of the annual report. Contrary to expectations, there is little evidence that non-audit fees, measured as the fees paid for consultancy and other services, have an effect on the readability of the annual report. Nevertheless, this chapter documents a strong statistical association which indicates that total audit fees, measured as the sum of audit and non-audit fees, can capture the economic bond between auditing firms and client management and that higher levels of total audit fees have negative effects on readability. Moreover, I document strong joint relationship between the three measures of fees and firm performance affecting annual report readability and that these interactions show that audit, non-audit and total fees exhibit greater effects in poorly performing firms. The second empirical chapter which investigates the association between the readability of annual reports and audit firm tenure suggests that audit firm tenure has a statistically significant relationship with the readability of annual reports and that longer tenure has a negative relationship with readability. Moreover, I document that, on average, the effect of audit tenure is stronger when the levels of audit fees are low. Finally, the analysis shows that the relationship between audit firm tenure and readability is relatively stronger in firms with weaker solvency levels. The third empirical chapter investigates the association between the readability of annual reports and auditor switching. The analysis suggests that the relationship between annual report readability and auditor switching in general is insignificant. However, after including the interaction term of switching and performance, the regression analysis suggests that when well performing firms switch their auditor they are more likely to disclose difficult-to-read annual report. Moreover, the mitigating effects of audit fees is insignificant in altering the relationship between switching and readability. The interactive relationship between switching and tenure is highly significant which indicates that, within this context, the effect of switching on readability is negative and that this relationship becomes stronger as the tenure increases. In other words, those firms with longer audit tenure are more likely to produce difficult-to-read annual reports than short-tenured clients. Moreover, the analysis of the short-term effects of switching suggests a negative and highly significant relationship between short-term switching and readability. This indicates that switching firms discloses difficult-to-read annual reports during the three years following auditor switching. Similarly, the regression results of the association between annual report readability and auditor switching within a five-year window (long-term) come in line with expectations, the relationship is highly significant and the sign is negative. This implies that firms that switch their auditor will have difficult-to-read annual reports within five years following the switch. However, it has been documented in the analysis that the effect of switching is stronger over a five-year window than short-term (that is three years following the auditor switching), which signifies delayed switching effects on readability. In both models, the mitigating effects of firm performance and audit tenure are statistically significant. In summary, the findings of this thesis suggest that firms utilise the readability of annual report, and that such practice depends on the audit function. Regulators are urged to examine the impact of client/auditor relationship and its influence on the quality of annual report.

Cette thèse comprend trois essais dont l’objectif est d’étudier les déterminants et les implications de la qualité de l’information narrative des entreprises cotées. L’originalité de ce travail par rapport aux études antérieures réside dans le fait que nous nous intéressons à la dimension qualitative de l’information divulguée. Afin d’appréhender la qualité de cette information nous recourons à des techniques de traitement automatique de langage naturel qui permettent de construire des indices de lisibilité des rapports annuels.Le premier essai étudie l'effet de la complexité textuelle des rapports annuels sur la liquidité des titres. L’utilisation d’un échantillon d’entreprises françaises cotées en bourse sur la période 2002-2013 montre l’existence d’une relation positive entre le degré de lisibilité des rapports annuels et la liquidité des titres. Ces résultats suggèrent que la complexité textuelle de l’information narrative affecte les investisseurs sur le marché des actions.Le deuxième essai étudie l’effet de la lisibilité des rapports annuels sur le coût des fonds propres des entreprises. Nous menons notre étude empirique sur un échantillon d’entreprises américaines cotées en bourse sur la période 1995-2012. Les résultats montrent que les entreprises font face à un coût de financement plus élevé lorsque leurs rapports annuels sont moins lisibles, ce qui indique qu’un degré faible de lisibilité réduit la capacité des investisseurs à prévoir les performances futures de l’entreprise et leur amène par conséquence à demander un rendement de fonds propres plus élevé.Le troisième essai examine l’effet des pratiques de réduction d’impôt des entreprises sur la lisibilité de leurs divulgations financières. La littérature mobilisant la théorie d’agence montre que ces pratiques de réduction d’impôt créent un cadre permettant aux dirigeants d’extraire des bénéfices privés aux dépens des autres parties prenantes. Afin de s’assurer que leurs actions opportunistes ne soient détectées, les dirigeants réduisent la qualité de l’information divulguée, ce qui détériore l’environnent informationnel de l’entreprise en question. En utilisant un échantillon d’entreprises américaines cotées en bourse pour la période 1995-2012, nous constatons que les entreprises qui s’engagent dans des politiques de diminution d’impôt publient des rapports annuels moins lisibles et plus ambigus.Mot Clés: Information narrative; lisibilité des rapports annuels; Risque d’information ; Liquidité; Coût des fonds propres; Optimisation fiscale
This thesis comprises three separate but interconnected essays that focus on the determinants and economic implications of corporate narrative disclosure. The first essay examines the effect of annual report textual complexity on firms’ stock liquidity. Using techniques from computational linguistics, we predict and find that less readable filings are associated with lower stock liquidity. Our study provides evidence that difficult-to-read annual reports can act as a non-trivial impediment to investors’ ability to process information into useful trading signals. The findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests, including endogeneity, use of alternative regression techniques, and use of alternative liquidity and readability proxies.Using a large panel of U.S. public firms, the second essay presents the first evidence highlighting the relation between annual report readability and cost of equity capital. We hypothesize that complex textual reporting deters investors’ ability to process and interpret annual reports, leading to higher information risk, and thus higher cost of equity financing. Consistent with our prediction, we find that greater textual complexity is associated with higher cost of equity capital. Our results are statistically significant and economically important. We also show that disclosure tone exerts a non-trivial bearing on the cost of equity. Our findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks, including use of multiple estimation methods, alternative proxies of annual report readability and cost of equity capital measures, and potential endogeneity concerns. Overall, our study contributes to the research examining the relation between disclosure quality and cost of capital.The third essay investigates the effect of firms’ tax avoidance practices on the textual properties of their annual filings. Using a large sample of U.S.-listed firms, we document a positive and statistically significant relation between corporate tax avoidance and annual report textual complexity. In addition, we show that managers of tax-avoiding firms tend to hide their avoidance behavior in more ambiguous language. Our results prove to be robust to the use of numerous alternative proxies of corporate tax avoidance and annual report readability. The findings are also robust to a number of checks, including, using additional control variables, employing alternative regression methodologies, and addressing endogeneity concerns.Keywords: Narrative disclosure; Annual report readability; Disclosure tone; Information risk Stock liquidity; Cost of equity capital; Corporate tax avoidance

A recent growth in textual analysis research in the accounting and finance literature relies heavily on context to draw conclusions about the readability or sentiment of the text under study. Yet the complexity of the text used in the financial disclosure is also relevant in evaluating readability and sentiment. Experimental results in this dissertation thesis show that a change in annual report complexity is associated with a change in the probability that a subject will comprehend the information being communicated in the disclosure. Specifically, increasing the complexity of an annual report disclosure dampens the probability that a subject will understand good news disclosures and accentuates the probability that a subject will understand bad news disclosures. Experimental results in this dissertation thesis also demonstrate that a change in annual report complexity is associated with a change in the probability that a subject will be optimistic about the nature of the news being communicated in the disclosure. Specifically, an increase in the complexity of an annual report disclosure reduces the probability that a subject will be optimistic about neutral news disclosures, decreases the probability that a subject will be optimistic about good news disclosures, and increases the probability that a subject will be optimistic about bad news disclosures. Further, experimental results show that subjects utilize the Financial Statements, Management's Discussion and Analysis, and Business Data sections of the annual report more frequently than the Notes to Financial Statements section of the annual report. These results should be of interest to regulators, public corporations, and readers of annual report disclosures.

Syfte: Årsredovisningar är ett av de viktigaste informationsdokumenten som börsnoterade företag ger ut till sina aktieägare, läsbarheten i dessa blir således viktig. Det finns incitament för chefer inom företagen att vilja mörka sämre prestationer för egen vinning. Styrelsesammansättning kan även tänkas påverka ä̈sbarhet i finansiella dokument då kvinnor och män kommunicerar olika och oberoende styrelseledamöter antar en mer objektiv roll. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att utifrån årsredovisningars filstorlek undersöka om det finns ett samband mellan rapporternas läsbarhet och företagens lönsamhet, redovisade resultat samt andel oberoende och kvinnliga styrelseledamöter. Metod: Studien har genomförts med en kvantitativ metod. Data har samlats in genom innehållsanalys av årsredovisningar från företag listade på NASDAQ OMX Stockholm Large Cap. Analys av data har skett genom att en korrelationsmatris och två regressionsmodeller har skapats. Resultat & slutsats: En lägre andel oberoende styrelseledamöter samt en sämre lönsamhet visar tendenser till att vara förknippat med sämre läsbarhet i årsredovisningar. Redovisat resultat och andel kvinnliga styrelseledamöter visar inget samband med årsredovisningarnas läsbarhet. Studien visar däremot på samband mellan större företag och årsredovisningar med sämre läsbarhet. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: För fortsatta studier föreslås att flera börslistor inkluderas och även fler redovisningsår. Det skulle vara intressant att undersöka om liknande resultat hittas för olika börslistor och då skulle en jämförelse vara möjlig mellan börslistorna och även över tiden. Uppsatsens bidrag: Denna studie undersöker läsbarheten i svenska företags årsredovisningar vilket breddar tidigare studier som främst undersökt amerikanska företag. Examensarbetet bidrar också genom att relationer mellan årsredovisningars läsbarhet och finansiella prestationer samt styrelsesammansättning studeras ytterligare.
Aim: Annual reports are one of the most important documents for information from public companies to their shareholders, readability in these documents are therefor of importance. There are incentives for managers to withhold information about poorer earnings for their own benefit. The board may also potentially affect the readability of the annual report since men and women communicate in different ways and independent board members act more objective. The aim of this final thesis is to investigate if there is a correlation between readability in annual reports based on file size and earnings, net income and proportion of independent and female board members. Method: This study was conducted by a quantitative method. Data have been collected through content analysis of annual reports from companies listed on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm Large Cap. Analysis of the data was done by a correlation matrix and two multiple regressions. Result & Conclusions: A lower proportion of independent board members and lower earnings tend to be associated with annual reports that have lower readability. Net income and proportion of female board members shows no association with readability of the annual reports. However, this study concludes that larger companies are related to annual reports that have lower readability. Suggestions for future research: For future research we suggest that more stock exchange lists are included and also more different years. It would be interesting to investigate whether similar results are found for different exchange lists and that would make a comparison possible between the exchange lists and also over time. Contribution of the thesis: This study examines the readability of annual reports issued by Swedish companies, which broadens previous studies that have primarily examined US companies. The thesis also contributes since readability in annual reports related to financial performance and board composition is further studied.

Bakgrund och problem: Företag ägnar idag betydande utrymme i sina årsredovisningar till berättande information som ska ge investeraren en helhetsbild av företaget och dess verksamhet, vilket ska öka användbarheten vid beslutsfattande. Investerare värderar den kontextuella informationen högt men anser samtidigt att den saknar aktualitet och objektivitet. Ett problem med den berättande informationen är att företagen kan framställa sina prestationer och framtidsutsikter på ett opportunistiskt sätt. Med utgångspunkt i att framvagnen består av berättande information och är en viktig del av företags årsredovisning är det av vikt att undersöka framvagnen. Läsbarheten av den berättande informationen har visats påverka icke-professionella investerare i en bedömnings- och beslutssituation, varför det är intressant att undersöka hur framvagnens läsbarhet påverkar investeringsbeslutet. Syfte: Syftet är att förstå hur framvagnen används som kommunikationskanal och förklara hur interaktionen mellan framvagnens läsbarhet och nivån på de finansiella nyheterna, positiva respektive negativa, påverkar icke-professionella investerares investeringsbeslut. Metod: Studien utgår från både en kvalitativ och en kvantitativ ansats. För att förstå hur framvagnen används som kommunikationskanal har vi genomfört semistrukturerade intervjuer, med en projektledare för årsredovisningen och två användare av framvagnen för få att deras syn på sambandet mellan framvagnen och de resterande delarna av årsredovisningen samt vikten av läsbarheten av och tilliten till framvagnen. Vi genomförde ett experiment på tredjeårsstudenter på civilekonomprogrammet vid Linköpings universitet där vi undersökte hur interaktionen mellan framvagnens läsbarhet och nivån på de finansiella nyheterna, positiva respektive negativa, påverkar icke-professionella investerares investeringsbeslut. Slutsats: Vi fann att framvagnen används för att kommunicera en berättelse om företaget men även för att sätta de finansiella rapporterna i ett tydligare sammanhang, vilket ska ge investeraren en känsla för varför den ska investera i företaget. En högre läsbarhet av framvagnen underlättar kommunikationen mellan företaget och dess investerare då samtliga investerare förstår informationen samtidigt som det undermedvetet ökar tilliten till informationen. Experimentet indikerade att läsbarheten i kombination med nivån på de finansiella nyheterna har en viss påverkan på icke-professionella investerares sannolikhet att investera och tillit till informationen. En framvagn med en högre läsbarhet som innehåller positiva finansiella nyheter torde öka icke-professionella investerares sannolikhet att investera i företaget. När framvagnen har en högre läsbarhet har de icke-professionella investerarna en större tillit till de positiva finansiella nyheterna. Har framvagnen däremot en lägre läsbarhet har de icke-professionella investerarna en större tillit till de negativa finansiella nyheterna.
Background & Problem: Today, companies devote significant space in their annual reports to narrative information, which provide investors with a complete picture of the company and its operations. The narrative information enhances the documents’ decision usefulness. Investors consider the contextual information valuable even though it is lacking timeliness and objectivity. One problem with the narrative information is that companies can present their achievements and prospect in a favourable way. Because the-state-of-the-company report consists of narrative information and is a significant part of the annual report it is of importance to explore. The readability of the narrative information has been shown to influence non-professional investors’ investment decision, therefore it is of interest to explore how the readability of the-state-of-the-company report influences the investment decision. Aim: The aim is to understand how the-state-of-the-company report is used as a communication channel and to explain how the interaction between the readability of the state-of-the-company report and the level of financial news, positive or negative, influence investors’ decisions. Method: The study is based on both a qualitative and a quantitative method. We conducted semi-structured interviews to understand how the-state-of-the-company report is used as communication channel. Interviews were conducted with a project manager for the annual report and two users of the state-of-the-company report. The purpose with the interviews were to get their view of the relationship between the state-of-the-company report and the financial reporting part of the annual report, as well as the importance of the readability of and reliance on the state-of-the-company report. We have conducted an experiment on third grade business students at Linköping University to explain how the interaction between the readability of the state-of-the-company report and the level of financial news, positive or negative, influence non-professional investors’ investment decisions. Conclusion: We found that the state-of-the-company report is used to communicate a story about the company, but also to contextualize the numbers, which gives the investor a sense of why they should invest in the company. A higher readability of the-state-of-the-company report enhances the communication between the company and its investors, since all investors can comprehend the information at the same time as it subconsciously increases their reliance on the information. The experiment indicated that the readability, in combination with the level of financial news (positive or negative), has some influence on non-professional investors’ likelihood to invest and their reliance on the information. A state-of-the-company report with a higher readability consisting positive financial new should increase non-professional investors’ likelihood to invest. When the state-of-the-company report has higher readability, non-professional investors have a greater reliance on the positive financial news. If the state-of-the-company report instead has lower readability, non-professional investors have a greater reliance on the negative financial news. The readability has not the same influence on professional investors because they have a more critical perspective on the state-of-the-company report.

Bakgrund Årsredovisningens berättande delar utgör numera majoriteten av årsredovisningen. De berättande delarna hjälper läsaren att tolka den finansiella informationen. Därmed är läsbarheten i de berättande delarna viktig för årsredovisningens användbarhet. Tidigare studier har kommit fram till att företag medvetet försämrar årsredovisningens läsbarhet för att dölja skadlig information och därigenom vilseleda läsaren. Syfte Studiens syfte är att förklara variation i läsbarhet mellan svenska börsnoterade företags årsredovisningar. Metod Denna kvantitativa studie tar sin utgångspunkt i ett eklektiskt och deduktivt angreppssätt där både läsbarhets- och redovisningsteorier ligger till grund för hypotesutvecklingen. Studien utgår från en tvärsnittsdesign där studiens empiriska material utgörs av sekundärdata som är hämtad från företags årsredovisningar. Variation i årsredovisningars läsbarhet analyseras med multipel linjär regression. Slutsats Studiens resultat visar att det finns ett starkt positivt samband mellan lönsamhet och läsbarhet och således har mindre lönsamma företag en lägre läsbarhet i sina årsredovisningar. Resultatet påvisar även att det förekommer svaga skillnader i årsredovisningars läsbarhet mellan olika branscher. Vidare indikerar analysen att större företag skriver längre texter och därigenom mer svårläst.
Introduction Nowdays the narrative parts are the majority of the annual report. The narrative parts help the reader to interpret the financial information. Thus, the readability is important for the usefulness of the annual report. Prior research has found that corporations strategically use the language as a tool to hide information and to obfuscate the reader. Purpose The purpose of this study is to explain variation in readability between Swedish listed corporations’ annual reports. Method This quantitative study is based on an eclectical and deductive approach where both theories of readability and accounting theories have formulated the hypotheses. A cross-sectional design has been used and the study's empirical data consist of secondary data, derived from annual reports. Variation in annual reports readability has been analysed by multiple linear regression. Conclusion The result shows that there is a strong positive correlation between profitability and readability, thus less profitable corporations have lower readability in their annual reports. The result also shows that there are weak differences in the annual reports' readability between different industries. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that larger companies write longer texts and thus more difficult.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the effect of U.S. firms’ geographic location, whether urban or rural, on their corporate disclosure and governance practices. An “urban” firm is one that is headquartered in a large metropolitan area; whereas, a “rural” firm is one that is headquartered some distance from any metropolitan area. Specifically, the study examines whether there are different stock market reactions to urban and rural firms around key event dates relative to the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on July 30, 2002. Also, the readability and linguistic style in the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) section of public company’s annual reports (Form 10-K) to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are investigated to determine whether urban and rural firms communicate information differently to investors.

碩士
輔仁大學
會計學系碩士班
105
The authorities and the public have increased the need for disclosure of transparency. None of the research discuss the readability analysis of different filings format. Therefore, our study will explore whether format of the U.S. company’s annual reports will affect the financial report users. In our study, we use four readability measurements to discuss the effect of the 10-K file format on readability. Our results show that the standard financial statements are more difficult to understand the content. All types of financial statements need the university education level to read financial statements. In addition, retail and wholesale industry have the higher level of readability. In other words, people who read the financial reports may easily to understand the content.

碩士
輔仁大學
金融與國際企業學系金融碩士班
105
This paper reference from the annual report of US listed companies, the use the readability of the report to explore the peer effect in corporate annual report readability. The result shows there is a conspicuous negative correlativity between the readability of peers report and the company's, which is when the peer company's earnings are more readable, then the company's earnings readability will be lower. It means the company has more information advantage than the peers, and disclosure of less information can brings the benefits for the managers or company, the interest is higher than investor's discounted cost because of the less information. It also implied that the peers expose more information relative reduce the company's advantage so the cost will be lower than disclosure more information that brings the premium benefits of investor. In addition, the study found when the size of the company (debt ratio) greater or the financial statements report notes the abnormal of the location will significantly enhance (weaken) the negative impact of the peers readability to the company's readability. At the last, the study also found that the negative impact of the peers’ readability to the company earnings readability would be stronger when the subprime crisis occurred.

碩士
輔仁大學
金融與國際企業學系金融碩士班
105
This paper explores the effects of internal governance on financial report readability by U.S. stock markets data from 2003 to 2011.The empirical results show that the internal governance significantly and negatively relates to its financial report readability. It means that the high internal governance level leads to lower financial readability. The significantly and negatively relation of internal governance and Annual Report Readability adding other control variables still hold. In addition, we find that the company with higher Accrued earnings management level will significantly reduce the negative impact of internal governance on financial report readability. Furthermore, we find that if the company reports the location of the notes in the financial statements is different from the normal format, it will significantly increase the negative impact of internal governance on financial report readability, revealing that when the financial reporting position is abnormal, company may hide some information.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
會計學研究所
99
This thesis would like to address three questions related to financial report readability and the informativeness of earnings for U.S. cross-lists. First, I consider whether readability of financial statements can affect their ERCs (proxy for the informativeness of earnings). Then I examine whether the importance of readability is more pronounced for firms with higher reconciliation differences. Finally, I examine whether the information lost due to the elimination of reconciliation requirement can be counteracted by good financial report readability. The findings show that there is a positive relationship between ERCs and financial report readability, suggesting that higher readable disclosures increase investors’ ability to process information and provide more information to the market, thus providing a higher level of ERCs. In addition, the positive association between readability and ERCs tends to be more pronounced for firms with larger reconciliation differences, indicating the information asymmetry and uncertainty about the underlying economic earnings due to reconciliation differences perceived by investors can be reduced as the readability of financial reporting increases. With respect to the final question, I find the positive association between readability and ERCs has become more pronounced after eliminating the reconciliation rule, suggesting readability of financial report can counteract balance the information lost due to the elimination of the reconciliation requirement.

碩士
輔仁大學
會計學系碩士班
106
The purpose of financial statement is to assist users making decision. Previous studies show that high disclosure quality of financial statement reduces information asymmetry and makes interested parties understand more about the operation of firm. Management has the responsibility of compiling financial statement. Consequently, management can hide or blur the expression of information if there is something adverse to firm. Furthermore, audit quality is important for financial statement because financial statement has to be audited by the audit firm. And the past researches usually use audit firm size to represent audit quality. Therefore, we explore whether audit firm size will affect the disclosure quality of financial statement. Disclosure quality is measured by the readability of 10-K financial statement and whether company is audited by Big 4 audit firm is the proxy of audit quality. The empirical results show that audit firm size is negatively correlated with annual report readability. It suggests that if the firm is audited by the Big 4, the CPA will require the disclosure of number and ways complying with the laws more completely than non Big 4. As a result, management can only hide or blur the adverse news through reducing the readability of 10-K to influence disclosure quality, and then mislead the user of financial statement.

碩士
臺灣大學
會計學研究所
98
The main purpose of annual reports is to help users make decisions. Hence, prior researches have focused on the decision relevance of annual reports for a long time. Compared with quantitative accounting data, textual information in annual reports contains much more forward-looking information, thus is more relevant to decision-making. However, most of prior studies focused on quantitative accounting data instead of textual information. This study attempts to test management obfuscation hypothesis by investigating the relationships between textual information in annual reports, performance, earnings persistence, and other financial variables. We use the readability formulas developed by Si-Yu Jing（1995）to calculate the readability of annual reports, and use the model of Li（2008）to investigate the relationships between annual reports readability and performance. Furthermore, we investigate the relationships between annual reports readability and earnings persistence. We find that annual reports issued by firms with lower earnings or less persistent positive earnings are harder to read.

碩士
國立高雄應用科技大學
會計系
106
The main purpose of the company's annual report is to disclosure useful information to users. It is a bridge between the Chief Executive Officer and users of financial reports. Most of prior researches focused on quantitative information in financial statements. However, the narrative accounting information in annual report contains much more forward-looking information than the quantitative information. According to the incomplete revelation hypothesis （IRH; Bloomfield, 2002）: Managers tend to disclosure with more complicated words, in order to enhance the company’s value, so that users of financial report can't easily interpret bad news. This study attempts to test the incomplete revelation hypothesis by investigating the relationships between quantitative readability of annual report, earnings management and other financial variables. This study extract from management discussion and analysis paragraph in the annual report. We use the readability formulas developed by Yao-Ting Sung et al. （2013） to calculate the textual information in MD&A, and use the model of Lo et al. （2017） to investigate the relationship between annual reports readability and earnings management. According to the results of the study, it shows that: 1. The suspicious company has a significant positive correlation with the readability of the annual report, which means that suspicious companies that may perform earnings management have poor annual report readability.2. The company who has conducted upward earnings management has lower annual report readability. In the abnormal operating cash flow operations and abnormal discretionary operating operations, this paper also finds that the higher the level of upward real earnings management, the worse the readability of the annual report, 3. Suspicious companies and companies who have performed upward earnings management have a significant positive correlation with changes in the readability of annual reports. This means that suspicious companies that may conduct earnings management and companies who performed upward earnings management will worsen the annual report readability than in the previous year.

This thesis aims to analyze the impact of textual features of UK Annual Reports sections on the cost of equity. We analyze the impact of the Chairman Statement, Financial Review and Risk Section linguistic features separately, for the UK firms from 2012 to 2017. We estimate the cost of equity through the Price to Earnings Growth Model and the linguistic features are divided between readability and sentiment (tone). We find that disclosure content has an impact on cost of equity, while readability has is associated with no impact on cost of equity. We also find that positive tone is associated with lower cost of equity in all sections of the Annual Report.
O objetivo desta tese é o de analisar o impacto das características textuais de certas secções dos Relatórios Anuais do Reino Unido sobre o custo de capital próprio. Analisamos os impactos das características linguísticas da Declaração do Presidente, da Análise Financeira e da Seção de Risco separadamente, para empresas do Reino Unido de 2012 a 2017. Estimamos o custo de capital próprio por meio do “PEG model” e as características linguísticas são divididas entre legibilidade e conteúdo (tom). Descobrimos que o conteúdo de divulgação tem impacto no custo de capital, enquanto a legibilidade não está associada a nenhum impacto no custo de capital. Também descobrimos que o tom positivo está associado a um custo de capital próprio inferior em todas as seções do Relatório Anual.