Share price response to earnings announcements in the steel industry

Abstract: The purpose of the thesis is to study share price response to quarterly earnings per share (EPS) announcements in the world steel industry for the last five years (from 2007 to 2011), using the event study methodology. Moreover, the paper attempts to test share price reactions to earnings releases for yearly aggregation (pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis periods) and countries aggregation (developed and developing countries) of sample steel companies. The research is conducted employing a sample of 30 listed companies, operating in the steel industry. The steel producers’ headquarters are situated in thirteen countries; they are traded on twelve stock markets as primary listing stock exchanges and are referred to thirteen respective indexes.The thesis uses the event study methodology in order to address the purpose of the research. This methodology provides an insight on how numerous corporate events (M&As and takeovers announcements, regulatory changings and earnings announcements) influence company’s stock prices. All the announcements were divided into two groups: “negative” announcements (Group I) and “positive” announcements (Group II). By “negative” announcements it is meant, that new actual earnings per share are smaller than earnings per share from the last quarter, and vice versa for “positive” announcements. The pattern for overall aggregation of sample companies showed the significant and expected share price response to earnings announcements for Group I only. The output for Group II was puzzling. This led to the assumption of negative market perception on the steel industry stock prices as a result of 2007-2008 financial crises. Indeed, for 2007, which was determined as a pre-crisis period for the steel industry, the share price reaction was significant for both groups of EPS announcements. However, within the two other periods (crisis period of 2008-2009 and post-crisis period of 2010-2011) significant and expected pattern was obtained only for Group I once again. The 2007 yearly aggregation comprised only twenty companies due to the data availability. This revealed the assumption, that this sample of twenty steel companies should be tested for the two other periods. However, the pattern remained the same as in the overall aggregation case. Furthermore, the sample steel companies were aggregated on countries basis. The obtained response was analogous to overall aggregation response, the only difference is that Group I reaction was more significant for developed countries than for developing counties sample.