managerial stock-based compensation, employment attraction—while the favorable situation lasts, but the retribution for even minor faltering of the growth is commensurately high. Second, the research I discuss in the next section indicates that investors and financial analysts tend to be overly optimistic about the growth prospects of companies with good track records, believing that the fast-growing sales and earnings will persist far into the future. The steep stock price decline upon a consensus miss is, therefore, not just a reaction to the disappointing earnings, but primarily a correction of the overly optimistic growth expectations. The message to managers is that if you suspect that your company’s stock is overheated, outstripping the business fundamentals, resist the temptation to ride the tiger—go along with the market—and instead gradually cool off investors’ enthusiasm to avoid their wrath when the inevitable end-of-growth materializes. In chapter 5 I provide diagnostics on how to identify overheated stocks and prescribe safe means of dismounting the tiger.
A Brief but Important Detour on Value Versus Glamour Stocks
The sharp investor reaction to an earnings miss of the erstwhile growth company I discussed earlier is related to a major puzzle in capital markets: the consistent, yet counterintuitive superior performance of “value stocks” relative to their “glamour” (growth) counterparts. Drawing attention to the different performance of value and glamour stocks is often attributed to Benjamin Graham, a successful money manager and Columbia University finance professor from 1928 to 1957, whose reputation has resurfaced in recent years by the claim that the legendary investor Warren Buffett developed his finance acumen in Graham’s class. Graham defined value and glamour by relating stock prices to various financial indicators, such as earnings, book value, or cash flows. Glamour stocks have relatively high valuations—high market-to-book (M/B) or price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios—while value stocks are characterized by low valuations.14
It isn’t surprising, of course, that investors favor certain stocks, while others are in the doghouse. If investors expect company A to grow faster than B, they will bid up the shares of the former, resulting in a higher valuation ratio (P/E or M/B) for A than B. However, and this is the basic tenet of efficient (rational) capital markets—one of the fundamental concepts of modern finance theory—if investors properly price securities, taking into account all available information about growth and risk, then the future risk-adjusted returns on the stocks of companies A and B (and, in general, the returns on high- and low-growth stocks) should be virtually identical, despite their current different valuations.15 The different growth expectations are fully reflected in current prices. Stated differently, in efficient markets, one cannot profit from widely known information—in this case, the higher M/B or P/E ratios of company A relative to B—after the fact.16 But here comes the value–glamour puzzle: during most of the post-World War II period, investment in value stocks—out-of-favor equities with low market valuation relative to fundamentals—yielded higher returns than glamour stocks, which investors favored.17 During the period from 1990 to 2008, value stocks yielded, on average, 11.5 percent annually, while glamour stocks returned 9.5 percent only.18 Josef Lakonishok and colleagues documented in 1994 that from 1968 to 1989, stocks with low M/B (value stocks) outperformed high M/B (glamour stocks) on average by 6.3 percent in the year following the valuation and founded a successful fund operation on this principle.19
How can the lowly value stocks consistently outperform their glamour counterparts? The traditional explanation is: compensation for risk. When the market is in positive territory, risky investments yield higher returns than do lower-risk securities, and the higher return on value stocks just reflected their higher risk than growth stocks. The problem with this explanation is that the documented value–glamour return differential is already risk-adjusted, accounting for known risk factors, such as beta (market risk), size, and the market-to-book ratio. Alternatively, the behavioral explanation to the value-growth conundrum rests on investors’ excessive optimism regarding growth stocks. They systematically overvalue the stocks of glamour companies, believing that their past sizzling record of sales and earnings growth will persist into the distant future and undervalue the prospects of the lagging value stocks.20 Thus, for example, the impressive sales and earnings growth rates of the likes of Microsoft, Dell, Vodafone, and Walmart in the 1990s led many investors to believe that these glamour companies would continue to grow briskly well into the twenty-first century, according them high valuation multiples (M/B and P/E ratios). However, as I noted in the introduction, corporate growth is ephemeral, and sooner or later the highfliers stall, inevitably leading to investor disappointment and stock price declines. The reversal of investors’ excessive optimism about glamour stocks and the undue pessimism regarding many value shares explain nicely the value–glamour return differential.
What does all this have to do with missing the earnings consensus? A lot, in fact. Skinner and Sloan document that much of the superior performance of value versus glamour stocks is due to consensus misses of the glamour highfliers when their earnings disappoint investors.21 Thus, the serious retribution to an earnings disappointment of a growth company is largely a correction of investors’ excessive, erstwhile optimism.
Who Is Afraid of Missing the Consensus?
CFOs are afraid of missing the consensus, according to an extensive CFO survey published in 2005 by John Graham and colleagues.22 A majority of the CFOs surveyed considered a consensus miss a serious setback to the company, and some indicated that they would even sacrifice certain future growth (by, say, cutting R&D) to meet the consensus. The specter of missing the consensus, say CFOs, is also a major driver of information manipulation. But, as this chapter’s title indicates and the following evidence corroborates, missing the consensus is far from the end of the world, and its consequences can be mitigated. Thus, even CFOs have something to learn.
So, What’s a CEO to Do?
A nightmare scenario: the quarter-end is approaching; you huddle with the CFO over the forthcoming earnings report and realize that earnings will fall short of the consensus estimate. Overcoming the initial panic, you recognize that something must quickly be done. But what? Here are the frequently followed courses of action managers take when facing the specter of the consensus miss, along with their consequences (see figure 1-2).
SALES BLITZ–COST CUTS (SHIFTS). The knee-jerk reaction to an earnings shortfall is to boost revenues and income by an end-of-quarter sales offensive, offering unusually large discounts, particularly common among medium-size and small technology companies, which finalize most of their sales in the last days of the quarter by offering exceptionally favorable terms. The obvious downside is that customers, aware of the vendor’s predicament from missing the numbers, wait until the end of the quarter to squeeze the last penny of the seller’s profit. In general, large price incentives surrender substantial economic value to customers and condition them to expect similar discounts in the future, and, while the sales blitz may boost EPS by a few pennies, the lower prices often shrink the margins—a closely watched indicator—leading to a price drop despite the EPS “hit.”23 Most ominously, the artificially enhanced end-of-quarter sales cannibalize the next quarter’s revenues, thereby exacerbating the forthcoming EPS shortfall.
FIGURE 1-2
Actions and their consequences
Managers encounter similar issues with another favorite action: last-minute cost cuts—distinct from carefully-thought-through efficiency measures—aimed at meeting the consensus estimate. Such cost cuts or shift of expenses—advertising, maintenance, travel—to the following quarters also exacerbate the problems down the road. Thus, both the sales blitz and last-minute cost cuts (shifts) make sense only if the EPS shortfall
