Confidential revenue and profit forecasts by management and financial analysts : evidence from Turkey

Abstract

This study is a replication of a study conducted by Schreuder and Klaassen in the Netherlands, in 1984 called "Confidential Revenue and Profit Forecasts by Management and Financial Analysts". The aim of the study is to examine the accuracy of management's internal forecast of revenue and profit, taking analysts' forecasts as a standard of comparison for Turkey. This research design differs from the previous research in that (a) it is based on confidential instead of published data, (b) it includes revenue and profit data, and (c); it investigates the extent to which the forecasters themselves, were surprised by the actual outcomes. For the study, management and analysts' forecasts on 18 companies in Istanbul Stock Exchange were collected. The findings show that managers perform slightly but not significantly better than the analysts. The errors rare close but smaller than the Schreuder and Klaassen' s study, 'and the difference between the revenue and profit forecasts' error is small whereas it is much higher for world revenue and prof'it forecast errors difference.