Comparability of financial reports and informativity of stock prices in Brazil

Disclosed information from one company is most useful if it can be compared to similar information from other companies, as the comparability of financial reporting helps to shape market expectations, expanding and improving investors' predictability. Thus, the objective of the study was to investigate the impact of comparability of financial reports on the stock price informativeness of Brazilian companies. The research covers the period from 2005 to 2015, measured comparability by the model proposed by De Franco, Kothari and Verdi (2011) and adopted a statistical approach with panel data analysis. The results showed that the average comparability of companies in relation to the sector and the intertemporal comparability over time are positive and significantly associated, as well as explain the stock returns. In addition, both average comparability and intertemporal comparability positively influence stock price informativeness, allowing to infer that the hypothesis of this study was not rejected.