Anomalia dos accruals: uma simples explicação

Resumo:

Accruals are the non-cash component of earnings. They represent adjustments made to cash flows to generate a profit measure largely unaffected by the timing of receipts and payments of cash. Prior research uncovers two anomalies: expected returns increase in profitability and decrease in accruals. We show that cash-based operating profitability (a measure that excludes accruals) outperforms measures of profitability that include accruals. Further, cash-based operating profitability subsumes accruals in predicting the cross section of average returns. An investor can increase a strategy’s Sharpe ratio more by adding just a cash-based operating profitability factor to the investment opportunity set than by adding both an accruals factor and a profitability factor that includes accruals.

Fonte: Accruals, cash flows, and operating profitability in the cross section of stock returns.Ray Ball,Joseph Gerakos,Juhani T. Linnainmaa,Valeri Nikolaev. Journal of Financial Economics. July 2016