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Earnings Estimates, Predictor Specification, and Measurement Error 213
choosing among different specifications, or calculating the grand
mean and dispersion across a number of specifications (and even
here, one would need to determine whether all possible specifications
are included).
Analyst coverage may also affect specification choice because
it affects data availability. Figure 6-1, for example, shows that the
availability of 6-week flash data declines noticeably as the number
of analysts falls below nine. The greater availability of data items for
more widely followed companies opens the door to greater choice
in predictor specification. There is some evidence to suggest, however,
that predictor specification may be relatively less critical for
widely followed companies. Figures 6-3 and 6-4 illustrate why this
may be the case.
Figure 6-3 shows the standard deviations of the differences between
fiscal year l flash E/P and consensus E/P predictor values
for the 3000-stock universe over the April 1990 to December 1996
period, stratified by the number of analysts following each stock.
Figure 64 provides the standard deviations for the differences between
fiscal year l flash and consensus trend predictor values, strat
ified by number of analysts. For both E/P and trend predictors, the
difference between flash and consensus specifications declines noticeably
as the number of analysts increases.
The decreased difference between the alternative specifications
as analyst following increases reflects two factors. First, the
number of analysts following a company tends to increase as the
company’s stock price increases; relatively higher prices in the denominators
of the predictors for widely followed stocks tend to dilute
the difference across earnings estimators in the numerators.
Second, the range in the differences between 6-week flash means
and consensus means narrows as analyst coverage increases.2O
The implication is that the valuation of stocks with less analyst
coverage may be more sensitive to predictor specification than the valuation
of widely followed stocks. This is confirmed by an examination
of differences in the rank orderings of the stocks, stratifiedby the
ber of analysts, between the two alternative E/P specifications.
For stocks followed by two to four analysts, rank order may
change by as much as kl000, depending upon predictor specification.
For stocks followed by 20 or more analysts, rank order changes
tend to be much smaller, on the order of 5300.