اختبار المحتوى المعلوماتي للأرباح مقارنة بالتدفقات النقدية في سوق دمشق للأوراق المالية : دراسة تطبيقية

Abstract EN

This research aims to test the information content of earning compared to cash flows.

The study is applied to a community, which consists of all the companies in the Damascus Stock Market (DSM).

The number of these companies are 24, whereas, the number of the companies sample is 13 spreading to many economic sectors including industrial, traditional banks, Islamic banks, and insurance companies for the period 2015- 2017.

However, the service and agricultural sectors are not included.

The test was conducted through four periods surrounding the date of publishing the financial reports, which are 4 weeks prior to the date of publishing the financial reports- the week of publication- 4 weeks after the date of publishing the financial reports- the period surrounding the date of publishing the financial reports within the 9 weeks.

The study used two measurement approaches, the relative and incremental informational content, by adopting regression models for this purpose.

The main results of the application can be stated as follows: 1.

The earnings contained a relative information content higher than cash flows in the Damascus Stock Market.

2.

The earnings contained Incremental information content in addition to the cash flows in the Damascus Stock Market.

This study reached a set of recommendations, the most important of which stress the necessity to enlighten investors with the importance of cash flow numbers and earning figures, which disclosure and roles are huge in evaluating the companies’ performance.

They also portray a reliance on mixing between discretionary accruals represented in the earning number and cash basis represented in the operational cash flow to help investors predict future earnings and flows for companies that lead to improving the quality of decision- making.