Trade Credit, Future Earnings, and Stock Returns: A Self-Dealing Perspective

Chinese listed firms are characterized by a great magnitude of long-duration accounts receivable from controlling shareholders and their affiliates, and they often do not make bad debt allowances. On many occasions, these receivables are never collected. We find that firms with a great magnitude of accounts receivable demonstrate a low level of future profitability and low stock returns. It does not appear that the low earnings persistence of these firms is responsible for their poor future performance as predicted by the accrual anomaly, because the firms also report low concurrent earnings. In the context of the Chinese stock market, we interpret the results as being consistent with self-dealing through trade credit by controlling shareholders. This study contributes to the self-dealing literature by identifying a more subtle channel of expropriation of minority shareholders in China.