Mandatory Earnings Disaggregation and the Persistence and Pricing of Earnings Components

We investigate whether the special item anomaly in the U.S. exists in an environment where the separation of non-recurring items from earnings is mandated. We use South African data, as the separate disclosure of specific non-recurring items has been mandatory since 2000. Our results show that, other than the cash flow component of earnings, none of the other earnings components reflects significant mispricing. When additional explanatory variables are included in the analyses, the mispricing of the cash flow component disappears. This evidence suggests that when the disclosure of non-recurring items is mandated, investors are able to price earnings components in a manner that is consistent with the actual levels of persistence of these components.