The Effect of Firm Sales Decline on Conservatism Based on the Asymmetric Timeliness of Accruals

Because conservatism in financial statements is applied primarily through the adjustment of accruals, conservative research has largely examined the impact of aspects of this feature on changes in accruals. The role of accruals is primarily to improve cash flow fluctuations. In conservative research based on accruals, typically several economic components of accruals such as sales growth, gross assets, machinery and equipment in the Jones model, and components such as multi-period cash flows in the Dichau and Dicho models Used. Bushman et al. And Allen et al. Improved the two models by combining the above two models. Byzalov and Basu also helped improve these models by breaking down bad news indicators into more detailed components. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of bad news from other components of company sales, such as product group sales, fourth quarter sales and the company's share of industry, on conditional conservatism in accrual-based models 

To achieve the objectives of this research, data from 144 companies from manufacturing companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange for 11 years from 2006 to 2016 using Rahavardnovin software, Kodal site and the site of research, development and Islamic studies of the stock exchange, it was gathered. And the relationships between the research variables were analyzed using panel data and the generalized least squares method. 

The findings of this study showed that the decrease in sales of the product group and the decrease in sales in the fourth quarter increase conservatism in accruals, because the decrease in these indicators gives signals to the company about the possibility of future sales decline. ; But the decline in the company's share of industry sales has not had a significant effect on the conservative behavior of managers and accountants. 

In evaluating working capital accruals, managers, in addition to the bad news caused by the decline in the company's overall sales, also pay attention to the analysis of sales decline of each product group in the evaluation of accruals, and if they see a decrease in sales in some product groups, They evaluate their inventory of these products for the next period with more conservatism. Also, if sales are declining for the fourth quarter, it is likely that the decline will continue in the next financial period, resulting in a lack of timely sale of available inventories at the end of the fiscal year, and the company is likely to devalue inventories. On the other hand, it seems that due to the lack of strong competition in the Iranian market and the limited available markets, managers pay more attention to sales changes and do not pay attention to changes in sales share in the industry, as a benchmark and predictive indicator of the future.